The nature of goals

I can close the book on the first week of my year of deliberate choices. Generally I think I am on track. I went to the gym twice this week for Pilates and twice for a weights workout. I'm happy with that as a starting point and whether it was from technique or just determination I found I was able to do a little more on the second visit for the weights. Mind you I didn't have much left in the shoulders/upper arms after the end of the weights session. I guess this indicates that the program is not too light anyway.

Last night as the cricket wound up (Aus vs West Indies 4th ODI) I was relaxing in my chair and realized that I had not done any writing during the day. It would have been easy to let it slide. It was already nearly 10.00pm. The commitment I made to myself and the fact that I had written it down helped to persuade me to go and make the effort to at least spend some time on that goal. As soon as I sat down words seemed to come to me so it was a pleasant hour or so writing the prologue to my story.

I've been pondering the nature of goals over the last week. We see ads on the TV all the time about weight loss and fitness and enough comments at this time of the year about "New Years Resolutions" to sink a battleship. Truth is I think most people make new years resolutions sometimes in their lives and many people take out gym memberships and barely use them or buy fitness equipment and then fold it neatly under the bed to be pulled out in six months, used for a week and then slotted away again.

Why don't these resolutions stick and what can we do to either make better resolutions or stick to the ones we do make. There is nothing new in my answer to this but I will list what I see as some important factors:

• You have to be making the resolutions/goals for the right reasons.
• You have to make achievable goals that stretch but won't break you
• You have to have an understanding of what setting a goal means

These might seem pretty self evident and self explanatory but I think most of us see people setting goals that do not meet the first two criteria and many people don't really understand what it should mean to them when they set a goal.

What are the right reasons for setting a goal? Well actually there aren't any right reasons that apply to everyone. There are only reasons that are right for you at this point in time. I can't set goals for you that you don't believe in. Its one of the things that fails in many performance appraisal processes in the workplace. Someone sets a goal for you or asks you to nominate a goal for the next period. You may not be wholly committed to the goal so you won't try. It's a lesson that my oh so stubborn son has taught me many times over the last 12 years. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink! It has to want to drink, or read, or waterski or whatever. So you have to want to reach the goal. It has to mean something to you otherwise you are wasting your time and energy.

Set goals that you can meet. If you don't you are setting yourself up for failure. I looked hard at the list of goals I have set and don't think, given the time I currently have available to me and the direction my life is or isn't going at the moment, that they are unreasonable. If I worked 60 hours a week or more my goals would have to be different or I just couldn't fit them in and still maintain some balance with the rest of my life.

So the crux of it all. What is a goal. To me it is a promise we make to ourselves. The word promise is one that is not used very often in our house. I told my kids some years ago that I was very careful with the use of that word. If I promise someone something then I am saying that pretty much come hell or high water I will do what I said. I don't make idle promises to people. If I don't think I can get something done then I tell them that, I don't promise it then fail to deliver. It looks bad, it affects my reputation and makes me feel bad. It doesn't after all take many failed promises before people just accept that your promise means nothing. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who think along the same lines when they are making promises to others. When they are making a promise to themselves it is often a different story. "Who will know if I skip this activity?" "Who will it affect but me?" "Who will know if I eat this cake I promised I wouldn't?" "Who will care if I don't go to the gym?" The problem with that is that it doesn't take long for you to start doubting your own commitment to promises you make to yourself. It gets easier the more often you make and then break a commitment.

It is for this reason that writing these goals down and writing this blog is helping me to meet my goals. I'm reinforcing the promise to myself by making a promise to you. Do you care that I made a promise to you? It doesn't matter. What does matter is that I care that I made a promise to you.

Thank you for being with me through this first week. I'm still working on the right frequency of posts. I don't want to write "I'm still on track" every day but I also don't want to leave it too long between posts. 

Next week will be a bit interesting as I am going to New Zealand on Wednesday for a few days to a week or so. Staying on track will take more effort I think.

New short term goal: By 1 March I will have the games room cleared to the point where we can set up the scroll saw in a clean, comfortable place for Mrs P to use.