Begin 2017 Setting Goals That Really Matter!

The end of any year is a moment of reflection and introspection for most people. Is it for you?

We think about the things we achieved and the things we didn’t, the opportunities we had and those we missed, the new friends we made and the old ones we haven’t been in touch with. And, of course, we also think about the goals for the following year.

It is very common to get extremely enthusiastic and go a bit too far by making too many “resolutions” that perhaps deep within ourselves we know we don’t care about. The diet to lose some pounds, getting fit, finding the new job, writing the new book, the amount of miles to run or bike, and God knows what other resolutions we create. The problem is that setting goals/resolutions that don’t matter usually ends up in frustration when we don’t achieve them. Has this happened to you?

The way I think about it is whether it is really fair to be frustrated for not doing what we shouldn’t even be doing in the first place.

This story seems to repeat itself year after year. And the end result is that those things that are fundamental for our life are pushed aside or neglected by the ones that are not even important, but consume important part of our energy and time. Has this happened to you?

For example, I made some resolutions at the beginning of 2016. And I made the mistake to mix some long term important goals and the actions to achieve them, with meaningless things that weren’t even aligned with what I wanted to do.

The end result of my 2016? I ended up the year achieving a little bit of everything, without completing anything. And, hey, I don’t want to be hard on myself. Many positive things happened during 2016, but I know I could’ve done better had I set the proper goals at the beginning of the year. Wouldn’t it be better to focus on what truly matters and is important to us?

I don’t want my 2017 to be another year of incompletion or mediocrity. I want it to be the year of achieving a few important goals in their entirety.

To do that, instead of regretting things or punishing ourselves on December 31 at 11:59 p.m., we have to change the end of our yearly stories by transforming the beginnings. We can’t keep setting goals for the sake of having something to do during the year.

It's way more powerful to focus on two or three goals that are truly important and meaningful to us. By focusing our attention on achieving a few goals during 2017 we are ensuring that most of our energy will be used purposefully, instead of diverting our mental and physical strengths to things that are not really important.

And this doesn't mean that many, many other things won't be achieved during the year. On the contrary, by setting the important, meaningful and overarching goals we will be giving the space to the smaller actions that are fundamental to achieve them, but without the concern and frustration that comes from the smaller failures along the way.

By setting big and important goals for 2017 we can automatically achieve three things

1. The failures and obstacles along the way become nothing more than opportunities to learn, stop and reflect, and do things better. Those failures are not fatal! Instead, they make us want to achieve our big goals more badly than before. We don’t dwell in them for too long, because there’s something more appealing and powerful to achieve by the end of the year; and
2. We are able to celebrate the small successes during the year, without getting too comfortable in the celebration! Those successes are victories throughout the year that take us closer to our goals. However, we understand that we are not quite there yet and we have to keep pushing.
3. We continually stop and reflect along the way and measure how we are doing. We are able to think about our accomplishments in terms of how close (or far) they are taking us from our goals. This is a great strategy for constantly realigning with our core goals.

To begin 2017 setting goals that really matter to you, I want to ask you

1. What do you want to achieve in your personal or professional life in the next 5 to 10 years?
2. What are the strengths you have to achieve those things? What do you need to work on?
3. What are you good at today and how can you get way better at it?
4. What are the two or three most important things you would like to achieve in 2017? How will those goals take you closer to your personal and professional vision for the next 5 to 10 years?
5. What are at least two actions for each of those goals that you can complete during the first and second half of the year?
6. How are you going to measure what you learn from your failures and what you achieve with your successes?

Let’s make 2017 the year of meaningful accomplishments! To do that, let’s begin by changing our story from the beginning of the year and thinking about the goals/resolutions that are truly important for us! Can you do it?

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