Goal Setting For A Meaningful 2025
With almost a month already into the new year, I would like to take a moment to discuss goal-setting. We tend to enter the new year with all these ambitions and goals on how we would like to spend the year. Unfortunately, in most people this enthusiasm seems to be short-lived and our goals do not stick nor do they lead to lasting change.
But, why is this the case? Are we not ambitious enough? Do we get discouraged at the smallest difficulty? Is it all an illusion just to enter the new year on a positive? One thing that we do know is that this leads to disappointment in ourselves when we go back and revisit all the things we wanted to achieve. And the pattern continues year on year….
In this article, I’ll share actionable tips and frameworks to help you set goals that inspire and sustain you throughout the year.
Before we go into how we actually set goals and the common pitfalls, let’s go back to basics: why is goal setting important? Setting goals provides direction and clarity and they can act as a motivator for our own personal growth. Taking this one step further, the simple act of writing your goal down significantly improves your chances of success.
So, if goals give me more direction and motivation, why are they not sticking? Often times, we set goals that are too vague making us feel more lost than clear on what actually we want to achieve. Additionally, we tend to be over-ambitious and set too many goals at one time. This leads to us scattering our focus among all and not progressing on neither. Lastly, another common pitfall is that we forget to plan for challenges or obstacles, causing a mismatch between our expectations on the goal and reality. But don’t worry—these are all avoidable with the right approach.
One of the most famous structured approaches to goal-setting is setting SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. By setting SMART goals, we are defining our goal further by quantifying it to ensure we know what needs to be done and how progress looks like. For instance, instead of saying, ‘I want to read more,’ a SMART goal would be: ‘I’ll read one book per month’. This also limits my goal within a time-frame to help me focus.
Another approach can be setting habit-based goals. That is, focusing on systems you can regularly tap into rather than on the outcomes. An example of a habit-based goal is build a 10-minute daily journaling habit instead of aiming to ‘be more mindful’. By creating a new system, your goal will eventually become a habit in your routine you can tap into, rather than remind yourself of what you set out to achieve.
Now that we have created a more sustainable goal-setting approach, nothing else can go wrong, right? As long as you complement the approach with the right mindset - stay adaptable and flexible. Avoid an all-or-nothing thinking and reframe setbacks as learning opportunities. Additionally, it is important to remind ourselves that progress is more important than perfection.
Now that we have created our SMART goals and engaged the right mindset to go forward, let’s look at some practical tips to stay on track:
Break large goals into smaller, manageable steps.
Use tools like goal trackers, apps, or a simple notebook.
Celebrate small wins to maintain motivation.
Find yourself an accountability partner who can check in on you and help you stay on track.
So, what’s your first step toward a brighter year? Write it down and make it real!