When another year has just gone by, if you are over forty, you can’t help it, but confess that time appears to pass by so fast. Most importantly, for those who believe in setting goals every year, it’s time for not only stocktaking, but for planning for the New Year as well.
Revisiting Past Year Goals
By the way how did you begin last year? Did you begin last year with some goals? If you didn’t, perhaps it’s time to begin the habit. If you did, great! and come with me.
What about revisiting your goals now? How many of the goals you set for yourself last year did you achieve? Let’s believe that you remember them. Would you say you achieved at least 50 percent of your goals? Being aware that most people set goals, but often never actually remember, let alone achieve them all. If you couldn’t achieve them all, at least you should have achieved some of them. And that is what is important at this time.
Writing Down Goals
Almost every person sets goals at the beginning of the year. But fewer people take the effort to write them down. If you are one of those who don’t you should start writing them down, especially if you are a professional and you have a diary or organizer, or personal planner. Otherwise what is the use of these organizational tools around you?
Just how important is writing down goals? Writing down goals is, first, making a record of your goals so that you can revisit them and remember them. Secondly, writing down goals is a way of making a commitment to pursuing and achieving them. It is taking responsibility for them and having interest in seeing them achieved. If you write down your goals you will be able to take stock of them at the end of the year. You will be able to know which goals you fulfilled, and which ones you could not fulfill.
The Unwritten Goals
There are also those people who set goals, but never write them anywhere. They keep them in mind. At least these people can be applauded for having goals. But the fact that they don’t write down the goals implies there is no commitment to achieving their goals. If they happen to achieve them, that’s well! But if they don’t, no one is bothered.
Another problem is that there is no reference for stocktaking at the end of the year. And without knowing where you are coming from, it’s questionable how possible it is to focus on where you are going, let alone to know what you have achieved. So if possible, write down those New Year’s resolutions.
Life Without Goals
Furthermore, there are those who begin every year without any resolutions at all. These leave it to daily circumstances to provide direction in their lives. They would rather maintain the status quo and hope that everything works well for their good.
The only advantage they have, if it is an advantage at all, is that they don’t have to take stock at the end of the year. Good luck!
Putting Challenges in Your Life
Seriously speaking, what are your resolutions for the New Year? Just in case you don’t know where to begin, here is one suggestion. John Lowe, one of my newest friends I met within the last year, taught me one thing. He said, “My life made sense when one day, God answered my prayer and showed me how to best organize my life and then manage it.”
Yes, life is best led when it is apportioned into departments such as social, family, professional, academic, religious, spiritual, to name just a few of the departments and then managed. But to really be able to enjoy it, each of these areas must have something challenging. You can introduce challenges into your life by having dreams or setting goals, commonly called resolutions at the beginning of the year.
Now that you are considering developing resolutions, what are your goals in each of the important areas of your life? The table below shows a list of life departments and examples of goals for the year. This is just an example. You have to carefully think about your life and then identify your own life areas, set resolutions and prioritize them.
