It’s 10 days into the year, the New Year’s party is a memory, kids are back in school, and most of us have returned to our normal routines. The excitement of the new year is slowly melting into reality.
This is the perfect time to think about the goals and visions that will help us create a great 2013.
Why Creating Goals is Important
When I was a senior in college, I began participation in a study that would track 100 women for 10 years after graduation. The researchers asked us questions about our goals for the next 5 and 10 years.
Each year I received a survey to ask me about my experiences that year. During year 10, I also received a call during which the researchers reminded me of what I had said I wanted to accomplish. I felt victorious when I realized that I had accomplished most of what was on the list.
I didn’t realize how much impact that yearly connection with the research study had on my life. Filling out the survey had kept me connected to those goals that I set for myself, those goals that involved doing and producing.
I learned two important lessons about goal-setting:
- we should articulate our goals in a concrete way–writing them down, creating a collage or something similar; and
- we should develop a way to revisit those goals often to keep us focused even when we don’t know it.
The Components of a Vision
Even though participating in the study was very beneficial to me, I have come to learn something important was missing.
What the researchers didn’t ask was about my goals for the type of person I wanted to become, for the “being” component of my future life.
I think of incorporating both, the doing and being, into goal-setting as much bigger. When we do, we create visions, for those
things we want to accomplish or DO
AND for the
type of person we want to BE, the quality of life we want to live.
Focusing on DOING will produce results, but we want to make sure to achieve results that align with our values and with what we consider important, our BEING.
Aligning the DOING in ways that serve the person we want to BE produces harmony, happiness, and well-being.
So take some time today.
Think about those things you want to DO, what you want to accomplish this year,
but most of all,
decide on the person you want to BE.
Don’t worry about HOW you will accomplish these goals. Keep the DOING and the BEING in mind and you will find a way.
