Blogger: Rachelle Gardner
With 2019 fast approaching, I imagine I’m not the only one reviewing the last year and setting some new goals. I’ve been thinking a lot about goal-setting and reading different sources on the psychology of it. I want to share some insights that have changed the way I do things. These thoughts have helped me reach more goals, and more importantly, find more satisfaction in the pursuit of the goals as well as the fulfillment of them.
1. Bigger isn’t necessarily better.
I don’t know about you, but I get weary of the rhetoric out there, always screaming at us to choose “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” and to “Shoot for the moon because if you miss, at least you’ll land among the stars.” Yeah, I get it. We need goals worthy of us. We need big goals to inspire us to work hard toward them.
But I’ve come to believe that most of us are already great at setting big goals. We just don’t know how to be realistic about them. We are all familiar with setting big goals and the disappointment of not reaching them, or giving up after a short time. The best way to ensure you’ll give up quickly is to set an overwhelming goal.
So I want to suggest that you look at whatever goals you’re planning, and ask yourself whether you can scale them back. I guarantee it won’t make you work less hard. In fact, if you can realistically see yourself reaching a goal, you’ll work all the harder toward it. And if you beat your goal, or reach it much sooner than expected… you can just set another goal!
2. Everything is an experiment.
I went into 2018 with this as my mantra. The idea of everything being an experiment helped me adopt a mindset that I can try anything and it doesn’t matter if it works or not because after all, it’s an experiment. I’m looking to see what works, and the only way I can do that is to try different things.
One of my (laughable) goals this year was to have a “zero inbox” at the end of every work day. Ha! After one week, I knew it was an impossible goal. But I didn’t have to slap a big “F” on my forehead for failure—because it was an experiment! The experiment was a huge success: it allowed me to identify that this was a silly goal, and helped me to formulate a better one.
3. Incremental is magical.
Related to the idea of avoiding goals that are too big and overwhelming, this one is about understanding that our goals can be reached a tiny step at a time. It’s hard—we want to overhaul everything! But it can be effective.
I might look at my daily productivity and say, “I’m spending too much time on Facebook! That’s it—no more Facebook until after 8pm!” Well, if I’m currently checking in to Facebook every hour (don’t worry—I’m not), then I’m probably going to fail at that goal very quickly. But if I were to say, “I’m going to set a timer and limit myself to a ten-minute Facebook check-in every two hours,” that might be a place to start. Once that becomes comfortable, I could cut it back even more. Setting incremental goals can be a key to actually reaching the “big goals” we have.
4. Data is key.
I’m probably not the only person who sets the same goals every year in the area of health, diet, and weight. While I’ve made progress at various times in my life, and on different aspects of this goal, I never quite got there. I never reached that nirvana—a “permanent healthy lifestyle” in which I could effortlessly stay healthy and fit for the rest of my life.
But guess what? This year, I did. Well, I’m on my way anyway. I’m much closer than I’ve ever been in my life. The difference was in the things I wrote above—smaller goals, experimenting, and setting incremental goals. But the thing that has made the biggest difference has been collecting data.
What does this mean? It means trying new things, and keeping track of what happens when you try those things. Using the Facebook example above, I could write down the results of my new plan to check it only ten minutes every two hours. If I can’t seem to stick to it, I’d write down what happened. “Got sucked into a conversation about politics, spent 15 minutes responding.” If a couple weeks’ of data shows that happening multiple times, I’d know I need to address this stumbling block. Maybe I’d make a new plan: “No engaging on political posts until after the work day.”
You get the picture. I used data collecting to help me with my health goals, tracking everything I ate (on about 75% of the days in 2018), my exercise, my quality of sleep, my grams of sugar and protein, how much water I drank (and more). I’ve been able to identify what makes it harder for me to follow my good habits and what makes it easier; what makes me feel healthier and what doesn’t; what makes me feel more full and satisfied and what leaves me hungry. The data has changed everything for me.
5. If it doesn’t bring you joy, it won’t happen.
This might surprise you: my new approach to diet & health actually became fun. I’ve enjoyed it so much, I’m excited to continue the journey. The experimental mindset and the amazing insights that came from collecting data have made the whole process exciting. Yes, it brings me joy to eat healthy now!
And finally I realized: I wouldn’t be excited to continue if it wasn’t bringing me joy.
So whatever your goal is, I think you have to find some aspect of pursuing it that will make you happy. And it can’t be the result that you assume will make you happy. If I set a sales goal for the year as an agent, I know the happiness in hitting that number will be momentary at best. The joy needs to come in the process—the daily habits that are leading toward accomplishing the goal. For me, there is joy in doing the work with my clients that will lead to selling their book to a publisher. Focusing on the joy in the journey is what eventually (incrementally) gets me to my goal.
I recently started reading the book Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff. While I’ve been following these five principles all throughout 2018, I realized that Jon’s book talks about all of it. I highly recommend this book if you’re setting goals for the new year!
What principles have you found helpful in setting and reaching goals?
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
Great post, Rachelle, and I think you have helped a lot of people here.
I’d take issue, though, with #5, “If It Doesn’t Bring You Joy, It Won’t Happen”. My replacement would be, “The Less You Want To Do It, The More You Need To Do It”.
For me it’s exercise. I used to be Olympic-fit (my job demanded it), but with pancreatic cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, expending energy is about the last thing I want to do. I’m very, very tired, and it really hurts to exercise. It hurts to breathe; sometimes I wish I could stop.
However…in the absence of any kind of health care (no insurance, no trust fund), pushing my body to keep up a high metabolism that burns out the tumours is just about my last option. It’s been successful, I think; I’ve outlasted the prognostications.
But every day, I have to talk myself into this routine (one which would tire a high-school athlete…as I once was). It’s going to HURT, and it’s going to leave me gasping and throwing up blood, and the other unmentionable things that will happen.
And there are no ‘attaboys’; my wife thinks I’m an idiot (she’s a former bodybuilder), as does my nearest neighbour, the assistant chief of police for the nearest town (he’s a serious iron-pumper).
It’s just me and survival, and my only goal is to earn the right to stand against the bloody dawn for one more day.
Guess my comment didn’t take, and I haven’t the energy to retool it.
Two cancers will kill me; it doesn’t matter now.
When I die, it’ll be facing forward, under the banner of Heaven.
That’s enough for me.
Ah, so the first comment DID take. Oh, well.
Andrew, you persisted and that in itself is powerful. As a nurse of 39 years, and one who for the past eleven years has suffered nonstop pain in my hands from injuries due to overuse that have lead to bilateral osteoarthritis in my hands, I’m agree about sometimes we just have to do things even if we hurt. For me, I’ve gotten used to the pain, and the joint damage. Somedays are worse than others, but I don’t let it stop me. It actually is a disguised blessing that was one of the reasons I am unable to physically do nursing and other jobs . Yet, I can write. I can work my new part time job that I am enjoying and learning new skills that can transfer to marketing books and speaking in the future. And, yet it is a blessing to me to and others because I take no pain medicine but use natural things like a detox drink with lemon, ginger, and mint in. Take tumeric, black pepper and apple cider vinegar that helps me all over. I do Zumba, and do free weights at the gym. This is just part of my journey that God has given me. It is to encourage those who have had serious challenges throughout life. To allow God His way to do a Roman’s 8:28 in my life. Every life on a journey, and for those who live and follow Jesus no pain is every wasted. That brings me great joy. And having that joy and having Jesus, the Living Hope is an eventual eternity of no more pain, no more suffering as He wipes the tears from the eyes of each, for everyone suffers in some way and we reach the final goal. “Well done though good and faithful servent.”
Betsy, wow…you’re an inspiration. Pain in the hands is dreadful. I’ve broken most of the bones in both hands (at different time) and thankfully, they heal…but chronic pain there…I can’t imagine.
The detox mixtures you mention sound like a good idea; I use some of the ingredients but will add the others. I’m all in favour of avoiding pain meds. They come at a pretty high cost.
I think you’re a splendid example of Romans 8:28.
A fascinating way to look at goal setting. Thank you, Rachelle. Now, I need to look at what I want to accomplish next year and especially the steps to that which bring me joy.
Testing
January’s goals may be pointless come May. That was 2018’s lesson, because my employer offered (and I took) a retirement package in May. I’m not ready to quit working, and I’m still reshaping the structure of my days. I recently started a morning job, and I just took a shot at a part-time ministry position. Seven months ago, my goals changed to: Let go. Be flexible .Try new things. Manage the change. Let God lead.
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I wasn’t after “Bigger,” it definitely was an experiment, it was far from incremental and definitely not data driven. But it came wrapped in joy, and for that I am grateful.
Not to spam up the joint (which I already kinda did), but since it’s been pretty quiet, some thoughts on ‘experimentation’. It’s a long comment; I apologise for that, and for its personal nature. I hope that in either its generalities or in its specifics, it may help someone.
See, sometimes experiments can’t be undone
When my doctor told me, on one of the last visits I could afford, that I was going to die, I decided to try to document the process through my blog, with the hope that it could give caregiving spouses information (and perhaps unexpected insights) to which they might otherwise not be privy. The inside dope, as it were.
This I did, and there have been times when I just didn’t want to write about the things I didn’t want to face. Pancreatic cancer is not a Hallmark movie. It’s ugly and messy and exquisitely painful, and walking through a life that you love and seeing it slip away, aspect by aspect, can be heartbreaking. But I did my best to write honestly; I’m glad I did. I’m told that it’s been a help.
But I didn’t consider the result of this ‘experiment’ on my soul. Nietzsche wrote that one should not gaze too long into the abyss, ‘lest it gaze into thee’. I knew the quote, and thought that I could stare down the abyss of pain and dread and terror.
This I did, but it’s hardened me into something that even I sometimes don’t recognize. Looking at one’s fate while despising sentimentality results in becoming Rufus, Tacitus’ centurion-prefect, who impose the old discipline upon his men because he had endured it himself. (The guys weren’t happy, and they beat the crap out of him.)
Barb says that I’m chillingly ruthless with myself, and that it sometimes leaks out in the way I relate to others…but worse, that self-abnegation robs her of the ability to share meaningful compassion. If I don’t care about how I feel, why should she? (Not that she doesn’t, but she thinks sometimes the effort’s wasted.)
So, the results of the experiment are in, and they can’t be reversed. I’ve reached a modus vivendi to deal with the deterioration of my own life, at the cost of a large part of my humanity. You don’t have to look to film for cyborgs; sometimes they manufacture themselves, and live among you.
In ‘The Last Lecture’, the late Randy Pausch described how he and his wife clung together and wept, as the reality of his situation manifested.
That is something I will never again be able to do.
The other part of Nietzsche’s quote is that he who fights monsters should be careful not to become one.
Wise words indeed.
My dear Andrew, the experiment can be undone and I will explain why I believe so.
I am going to try to keep this short for the blog, but I’m hoping to undo the cyborg in you.
I was a cyborg once. Not at the beginning. At the beginning from birth until age six or seven, I was a joyful little girl full of energy and everyone was my friend, even if they didn’t know it. I was my father’s delight, his little teacup. Among the brood of five children, my father and I had a special bond for fun, joy, and laughter.
But, that all changed when we moved eight hours away from southern Wisconsin and family to northern Wisconsin and the unknown. It was to be an adventure of adventures. We were going to live in a small town right on the edge of Lake Superior and all it’s beauty. My entire family loved the outdoors, picnicking and hiking.
Only thing, the job my father trained for and wanted to have in a desire to help others–social work–ended turning him into a Cyborg of sorts. No one knew working with the many women without husbands, and the endless children without fathers would trigger him back into his past, the past that had so traumatized his own life .
At the age of five, my father recieved his last goodbye kiss from his father who was going off to work. His father never made it. The friend who drove them to work tried to out run a train to cross the track. It was a fatal choice. The driver lived but pieces of my dad’s father were picked up and put into bushel baskets.
My father not only lost his father that day but his mother who had to take in people as borders and the wash of others to care for her four fatherless children. My dad was the youngest.
His mother worked hard to raise her children well. But the affect of the loss of his father at that young age, and the struggle of his mother had left a hidden wound. The wound exposed from his daily interaction with the destitute women and their children rent his heart and his mind.
He didn’t want the same to happen to us, and fueled by fear and daily reminders he began to come home to question my mother daily at the supper table. “What do you do all day when I’m gone? What’s going to happen to you and the children if something happens to me?”
The questions eventually became louder and my mother would cry as she explained what she did all day.
One night at the table I had enough. As my mother cried, I shouted at my father, “Daddy, stop being a bully!”
I sat directly to his right at the round table. Fast as lightning, my father back handed me in the face causing me to skitter in the chair toward the wall. All eyes shot to my father, and my father fell to his knees to apologize.
I wish I could say it never happened, I wish I could say it only happened once. But it didn’t. That one backhand led to ten years of terrifying physical abuse any time my father had a bad day taking care of others. During those years, I was shaken, kicked, hit and thrown down the stairs to the side door and told to stay in the basement until he said I could come up. I was let up to cold meals and my mother’s broken heart. I was beaten only to be told to get to my room, only to be chased and beaten again. All his anger for social ills was taken out on my small body. Eventually my mother would warn me if my father had a difficult day, and tell me to go upstairs and stay until she felt it was safe to come down. On occasion my father might beat my younger brother, on occasion the sister just above me, and never the oldest daughter or my mother. It was me who became the whipping post for those situations and those people that stirred up his mind and heart.
My father was not a drunk. He was a well respected member of the community, local Catholic Church, and neighborhood. I never heard him swear or talk bad about anybody except us children, and mostly the youngest three. I was born in 1958, physical abuse of children was just becoming a recognized issue in psychology–the irony of it astounds me.
My father in front of my very eyes had become a monster–a cyborg doing good for others but a Jekyll and Hyde for his family, especially me his little teacup that was shattered into pieces.
Because of the trauma, I shut my heart off, and also stopped crying when he hurt me because it was the one choice I had as he beat me. I remember the day and time clearly. He was beating me in the family room. Something in me rose up, and I just stood there as he hit me. By this time I was probably fourteen. It was that day I determined he would never see me cry for what he did. Instead, I would shut my bedroom door, go into the closet in a corner under tha hanging clothes. With a pillow held tightly over my mouth, I would cry until no tears were left. I would as God where my hero daddy went, and how did a monster get in his body? Why just me all the time?
I eventually became a cyborg of sorts, I had to put my broken heart, battered body and traumatized mind aside to rescue myself, my family and my father who I knew had to be somewhere inside all the anger. But, I had list so much even the concept of love. As I reached fourteen and fifteen I was really losing hope. I wanted to run away to the twin cities. Too young for a job I reasoned I could always become a prostitute, and at least get some love like hugging and holding. Until, Gid whispered in my ear, “They beat their girls too.” I remember thinking, I had already been beaten by my own father. I didn’t need anyone else to beat me too. I began to entertain ideas of suicide just to picture my parents crying for me at my funeral, just to know they still had some live fir me somewhere in their hearts.
But, God saw, God heard, God knew about the whole thing, and one year later June18, 1975 I met Jesus. When the pastor talking to me told me God loved me, I could not believe it because by that time I thought people liked me, and I was funny and kind, a great student, but to live me–no. I had such joy in my heart ti know someone loved me and it was God. Knowing He wanted a relationship with me, and all He asked was for me to love Him back. Without hesitation I welcomed Him into my life. And I felt peace.
Now, last you think it was all fun and laughter after that, especially coming from the ash heap like I did you would certainly be wrong.
My dear Andrew, abuse is like an ugly, painful, debilitating cancer, but it eats up its victims from the inside out, and the outside in and can consume an entire life and family. My heart, goes out to you and you and Barb both know that from here at the blog of Books and Such and at your own blog. I cannot imagine the pain you are in, and your daily journey but these things I know: you are loved first by God, then your beloved Barb, your dogs, friends that surround you and myself and many others. I don’t know why you have suffered so long, and I know your training from the past puts the fight in you to go on, but take time to relax into the love that surrounds you. You are not a cyborg but a driven man.
I have a sign on a bookshelf by my desk that is a reminder God gave me to differentiate Himself, my Heavenly Father from the experience I had with my earthly father. It is this: I do not drive with a whip;I lead with a staff.
Eventually, both my father and mother found the love, peace, and forgiveness I did. They have both passed, but our last words to each were, “I love you.” My father in finding the relationship with the God he so needed found the healing for his own heart and mind.
You see my dear friend, there is always hope for cyborgs, Orcs, and Jekyll and Hydes. There are always chains to break, yokes to lift off and bands to break. With God, the I AM, miracles happen. Just think about Christmas.
With much love, and prayers to you and Barb, to this blog family, and to the Books and Such Literary Management who let it happen, and a very special season of Christmas.
Simply,
Betsy
Betsy, my gosh…this courageous and beautifully-written testimony of ghastly trials and shining faith moved me to tears, and I’m absolutely dead sure that all who read it came away shaken and awed.
You’re so right that there are always chains to break, and that we can’t do the breaking. We have to sit still long enough for skilled Hands to remove them, perhaps link by link.
And we have to allow ourselves to be to weak to stand, sometimes, and to be held up by the strong arms of He Who loves us, and by those that make up His Body.
Like Barb, my dogs, and you, along with this wonderful, precious community.
Tonight breath is coming very hard, but your words and care have given me a peace that is beyond my understanding, and have warmed a cooling heart.
Thank you dear friend.
And thanks to everyone at Books and Such for making exchanges like this possible; so many posts, so many interactions here have shone a warm light into a pit of despair. I’m so grateful.
Loved this post Rachelle! Lots to think about and put into action.
Thanks so much!