Goals… What do they really mean anyway?

BY COLLEEN LINDBERG

If you didn’t grow up in a household where your parents or family set goals, the same thing for your school, the people you hung out with and the community you lived in, then as an adult you might not even really know what a goal is. This day and age a goal is also known as something you are striving for, an intention. Goals are meant to be in our lives to instigate change.

At a young age, I set goals. I wanted to make a certain baseball team, I wanted to save enough money for this jean jacket. Then, of course, looking back, I set a goal for a car, or even to date that guy (yes, I was that girl). At the time I didn’t classify them as goals, I was just aiming for and taking action. So, I ask you “What are you striving for in your life? What change are you looking to make and what actions are you taking to get there?”

Goals are those things that make us want to change things in life. They help us to get better, to refine skills, to learn new things. I really believe that as humans we should all be aiming to keep learning more about ourselves and every day keep becoming a better version of ourselves. In order to integrate goals in your life, you don’t have to create a vision board or put them all over your wall as I do. Start small. So, let’s look at your life right now, where do you want to create change? Let’s just pick one thing. It might be in your body, it might be that you want to speak another language. Maybe it’s spending more time with your partner or learning to paint. There are so many aspects of our lives that sometimes things get missed, shoved aside and not focused on. So, let’s pick one where we can make an immediate change.

Now that we know what/where we want to set this goal, we now have to create a plan. So, for me, I just joined this new gym and I want to integrate workouts now into my life on a consistent basis. My mind is saying “I’ll go 5 days a week and possibly 6, at 6am every day to get these in”. However, I have definitely proven to myself that this might not happen right away. So instead of setting myself up to fail right away, I will plan for 3 days a week and if I make it 5 days, it’s a bonus. So, whatever it is you aiming for, make sure that no matter what you make that plan where you can easily commit to it and stick to it. We sometimes set these goals that are meant to stretch us and make us move, but they are too much to chew all at once.

The last piece is to just start taking action. So, we set the goal, make the plan and then act. With small actions comes change. It’s the cookies I eat every day that create the 10 pounds of fat down the road, so the same is true for small actions in a positive direction.
We all want to be happy in life, to love and be loved and to connect. Goals are a way to connect with ourselves, to love ourselves and to really build that life we are happy in. Have fun.