As someone who regularly achieves most of the goals I set for myself, the past two and a half months have been an interesting experience in my goal achieving practice.
California started its shelter in place in mid-March. The first 2 weeks I did fine with my goals.
Then things started to go sideways a bit. I realized that some of my annual goals were not going to be achievable purely due to things beyond my control (travel, some financial and some on exercise). I was also still struggling with back issues which messed up my running goals.
In April and May I found some of my “regular” goals were not being met. I did the two things I suggest in my upcoming book: check in with your accountability partner and to re-engage with your goals. While this mostly worked, but I still found that I had good weeks and bad weeks when it came to achieving my goals.
On the bad weeks, I treated myself with grace and accepted that being sheltered in place and living in a worldwide pandemic was going to take its toll on people. I didn’t use it as an excuse, but I made sure to not beat myself up for missing some regular goals around exercise, weight and social stuff.
I’ve found over the past few weeks that I got into a good groove. Things became a bit more normal (it’s amazing how well we can adapt!), and I found myself back to my regular goal achievement level.
Now, as California is starting to open up again, I have found this to be a really good time to fully recommit to achieving my goals like I did pre-Covid.
I am back in the saddle as it were.
If you are not quite there yet, I encourage you to reach out to your accountability partner to get some motivation. Look over your goals sheet and modify as needed to take into account that we’re in a different world. Your goals need to reflect the new reality.
Critically important: Cut yourself some slack for missing past goals. What is done is done. Be kind to yourself. If you are lamenting what you did not do over the past months, that steals energy away from what you want to accomplish over the upcoming months.
Take a few minutes to sit down and look at your goals list. What still matters for you to do between now and the end of the year? Get rid of the ones that do not serve you or are not possible to achieve due to the change in circumstances of the new normal. Then update your goals for the end of the year. Make sure they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time based) and chunk them down so you have goals by quarter , by month and by week.
Then take the daily steps to move you towards accomplishing your dreams.
As we reopen our country, make sure to re-engage with your goals. It will make the rest of the year much better!
#GoalsThatMatter
Nice piece Mike. Some of us underestimated the magnitude of this crisis in the beginning as it was mixed with hype and anxious energy. As time passed we knew we were in something real. Now is the time to clear the heads and get focused. We cannot control the elements around us but we definitely can retool our plans and focus on discipline. When when we feel lost or unsure, that is when the accountability partners help us to stay on track. If those who do not have access right now to an accountability partner, with all this social distancing, then as crazy as it sounds, to create one in your head and empower that voice.
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Nice blog! Thanks you all star articles good story!
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