Is COVID-19 Affecting Your Goals?

Is COVID-19 Affecting Your Goals?

For those that have gone through my Goals That Matter system, you know I’m not keen on giving up on goals. At times, we may discover a goal is no longer serving us, so I recommend looking at your “Why”. Why did you set the goal? What were you ultimately trying to accomplish?

In my upcoming book, I share a story of David Osborne (Author of Wealth Can’t Wait) that wanted to run a 50-mile ultramarathon. His “Why” was better health and a friend of his had done it. After running a couple of half-marathons, David accepted that he really hated running and could not imagine continuing. It was no longer serving him. He looked at his why and decided there were other ways he could achieve his ultimate goal of better health.

You may have some goals you set for yourself that now seem impossible to achieve due to COVID-19 and sheltering in place. Your listed goal may not currently be possible—for example, going to the gym or a weekly date night with your partner—so I encourage you to look at your Why.

Why did you set the goal? Was it for better health? Losing Weight? Having a better relationship?

Though it’s true that your original goal may not be able to be accomplished, when you pinpoint the WHY of your goal, you may be able to identify ways you can modify the goal during this time so that you are still able to achieve the end result you were seeking by setting the goal in the first place.

For our earlier example, instead of going to the gym, you could do home workouts or decide to start going for walks or hikes (appropriately social distancing) to get you moving. If you wanted to improve your relationship with your partner, you could have a “date night” where you cook dinner (or COVID twist: You’re spending SO much time together, the date could be making sure you take care of everything so your partner can have some alone time). With a little ingenuity, I believe you can modify your goal to meet your original Why.

Unfortunately, there are some goals that will not be able to be met PERIOD.

Every day, I review my Accountability sheet that lists all my goals (10-year, 3-year, 1-year, quarterly, monthly, and weekly). During these trying times, I have been pretty good about meeting my weekly and monthly goals. I’ve also allowed myself some grace when I didn’t (see my last post about Allowing Yourself Some Grace).

However, I have some annual goals that I cannot meet due to COVID-19. It has been bothering me every time I see them. They are:

  1. See my brother 4 times (who lives out of state)
  2. Visit 4 new countries (part of my larger goal of visiting 100 countries in my lifetime)
  3. Do an international trip with my parents and my brother.

With travel restrictions and shelter in place, these goals are impossible to do this year as written. My parents will not be traveling for some time and to see my brother requires a plane trip, which I’m not going to do this year. Same with visiting 4 countries.

Every day for the past month, these goals on my Accountability sheet made me hear a little voice saying, “no you’re not”. My Accountability sheet, which gives me energy towards achieving my goals, was telling me every day that I wasn’t going to meet my goals. This may seem small but for the goal achieving guy, it was making me nuts.

I checked in with my accountability partner to walk through my thinking. I looked at my Why (love of travel for one and closer family connections for the other two). I decided I could still achieve my Why of closer familial connections by having regular communications with both my brother and my parents.

My travel goal of visiting four new countries? I’ve had to give it up this year. I still am keeping my long-term goal of visiting 100 countries and will get back to traveling in 2021.

I am keeping movement towards my Why of closer relationships with my family by changing how I would achieve them. I had to give up the travel goals.

At the same time, I did decide to move all three goals as originally planned to the following year. I still want to do them, and they are important to me. My accountability partner agreed with my logic and modified some of his as well.

The lesson for me was to go back to the basics and look at my Why. And to talk to my accountability partner to make sure I wasn’t just telling myself a story. I encourage you to do the same.

If you don’t have an accountability partner and want to check in with someone about modifying your long-term goals, feel free to email me at Michael@goalsthatmatter.com.

#GoalsThatMatter

Allow Yourself some Grace

Allow Yourself some Grace

We are now several weeks into shelter-in-place and I’ve talked to many friends who have seen their enthusiasm to work on goals range from “I’ve got all the time to do what I need now” to “I don’t have any energy to do anything today.” Often during the same day!

This is an interesting time. We have SO much more of it than we ever did. That means we have all the time we need to work on those DIY projects, to work out 6 times a week, or work on any number of goals now that we have the time, right?

The answer may be yes. And it may be no.

The emotions I’m facing during this pandemic go from high to low with some regularity. I may wake up full of energy only to find myself knocked off track by world events or finding that a friend is struggling. It’s a wave of emotions and it seems the surfboard I’m on isn’t quite as sturdy as it used to be.

Log into Facebook and it seems like a wall of challenges: Workout challenges, food challenges, DIY and what not. It seems all the world is doing more than we are during this pandemic. Everything is telling us to be more productive. Use all this extra time wisely. And yet….there are times we just don’t want to.

For those of us that are used to pushing ourselves and achieving our goals, it’s hard to accept that we just may not have the enthusiasm even though we have the time.

As the goal setting guy, I’m always up for a great challenge and usually push myself to accomplish everything I’ve put on my Goals sheet. But I’m giving myself some grace these days. I’m accepting there are days I just don’t have the juice. I’m not trying to fight it and I’m not guilting myself.

This isn’t to say the entire shelter-in-place timeline is an excuse to not do anything. It’s just accepting that there are going to be days that we are out of sorts, feeling lonely or depressed. We are in the midst of a global pandemic and our world has been turned upside down. Overnight, many of us have had our lives disrupted. Sure, we may have more time but there’s a lot more baggage to carry now. And sometimes that baggage weighs us down.

It’s during those times that I encourage you to allow yourself some grace. It’s a great time to talk to your accountability partner to get some perspective. Mine has been a godsend during this past month. On the days I’ve been low, he’s challenged me to accept it as it is and cut myself some slack. I’ve been able to offer the same in return. Overall, I’m doing okay with my goals. This week has been a very good week of achievement. Last week was not. And that’s okay.

I’m allowing myself some grace.

 

How about you?

#GoalsThatMatter