What are the most challenging parts of goals?

We're a month into the new year, and the shiny newness of our new year's resolutions and intentions might be starting to wear off a bit. That's ok, goals are meant to challenge us. If they were easy, we would just do them without having to think about them, put a plan in place, or find ways to motivate us. Sometimes things can be so challenging though that they can stop us from progressing with our goal. These can include things like a lack of clarity, not having aligned your goal with your values, procrastination, and fear of failure. But there are things we can do to meet these challenges.

Lack of clarity

It’s important to be clear on what our goal is. This means being specific and precise. Take for example the goal to ‘get fit’. How would you know when you’ve achieved that goal? If we were more specific, we might aim for something like ‘run for 5km without stopping’. Now, it is more clear. We know that if we can run for 5km without stopping, we will be fitter than we are now.

 Unrealistic goals

If we are not realistic in the goals we set, then they are simply not going to be achievable. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t challenge ourselves. To continue the running example from above, if you have never done much exercise, it would not be very realistic to set a goal to run a marathon during the coming summer. That’s not to say you should not aim to complete a marathon, nor does it mean that you should not have the aim to achieve a running goal by the summer. Perhaps, with a five to six month timeframe, depending on various individual factors, aiming for something like a 5km or 10km running goal is more realistic. Sometimes ensuring our goals are realistic can be an important conversation that balances our dreams and our critic to find a middle ground.

Unplanned goals

It’s all fine and well to have a goal to run 5km without stopping, but how are you going to get from the point you’re at now to that goal? Spending some time planning the steps, figuring out how those steps might fit into your life in terms of time and effort, allowing buffers to counter unexpected issues (such as injury, for example). If your goal is timebound for example, start at the end and work backwards. To run 5km in 5 months’ time, maybe you want to aim to be running 2km in two months’ time.

Uncelebrated goals

Goals are often long-running, but, if we’ve planned them right, there’s lots of smaller steps involved. Viewing the completion of s particular step of set of steps as a milestone is key, as is celebrating each milestone. It’s important to plan this ahead of time too – otherwise, we will just keep going without stopping to mark them. Decide appropriate celebrations for each milestone – match the size to the importance level of the milestone. Consider if the celebration could involve other people – often those around us would love a chance to celebrate! Remind yourself as each milestone approaches what the celebration is, and make sure you do what is needed to mark that – for example, if you plan to celebrate running your first 2km without stopping with a massage, don’t forget to book it in advance.

Unresourced goals

It’s important to consider what you need to achieve your goals. Do you need new skills? Help? Do you need particular materials? For example, if you are planning to run 5km without stopping, perhaps you should check in with a doctor or physio first to make sure you don’t have anything that needs attention first. Perhaps researching if there’s a particular app that you would like to use, or if there’s a running club in your area that you might like to join. Do you have running shoes? Do you need someone to watch your kids while you run? It might feeling overwhelming to think of these things, but it’s better to consider them now – if you don’t have what you need, it’s better to realise it now, and do something about it, or find an alternative solution, than to have it stop you partway through.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism can show up in two ways:

1. In never completing a goal because you keep moving the goalposts. This can be ok in certain circumstances. For example, if you complete your 5km running goal, it’s ok to then extend that to running 10km, and then 15 km, and so on, as long as you remain within the realm of whats realistic for you.

2. In an all-or-nothing approach, whereby because you can’t immediately achieve your goal (because you can’t get up and run 5km in the next week), or because something happens that means you can’t achieve it according to how you envisioned it (because maybe you get an injury that pushes out your original planned timeframe), you give up completely.

The first option is mitigated by being honest about what’s realistic, and not compromising other areas of your life or wellbeing in the pursuit of your goal.

The second option is mitigated by focusing on the milestones on the path to your goal, and to remember that progress is more important that perfection, because reaching your goal later than intended or in a different way, is much better than not ever achieving it because you gave up. At least some of the positive of pursuing a goal is the pursuit as much as the end goal. This can involve needing to regularly remind yourself of this, and to challenge yourself to not give up when you hit setbacks, as well as really leaning in to celebrating the milestones.

Unreviewed goals

We all set new year’s resolutions – but how often do we check in on those resolutions? We might reflect sometimes when someone else asks, but do we ever set a plan to check in weekly, monthly, or even at the six month mark?

Life is unpredictable. We set goals with the best will and faith in the world, as is only right, but we can’t know what is going to happen. What if we set our running goal and then immediately lose a week to a terrible weather storm in January? What if we twist our ankle in March? What if, actually, it turns out we were fitter than we realised, and we hit our goal in 4 months instead of 5? It’s important to revisit and check in with our goals quite regularly. This means we can identify if we are hitting our interim milestones, and make sure we celebrate accordingly, but we can also identify if something is interfering with our ability to progress, and allow us to modify as needed.

If things aren’t going as we’d planned, consider why. Is it due to something out of our control? Is it because maybe this goal hasn’t ended up being as much of a priority as it started out? If that’s the case, that’s ok. Maybe we realised we actually prefer hiking instead. Or movie nights. If our goals are truly aligned with our values, this won’t happen to often, but something the only way to really find this out is to give it a go. Our image of our ideal self can sometimes cloud our understanding of our values.

It's important to remember that you can’t anticipate every potential challenge, and that’s ok. That’s why we check in and adjust as needed. But considering some of these ahead of time can help ensure that we don’t encounter so many challenges that we set ourselves up for failure.

What are some challenges you are encountering with your goals, and what can you put in place to mitigate the impact of those challenges?