Your Biggest Goal Setting Mistake
Guest Post By Christa from Do A New Thing
Did you set goals at the beginning of this year? How many of those goals did you actually reach? Maybe one or two? For most people, the answer is a big fat zero. So don’t feel bad if that was you. You are in good company!
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Why You Didn’t Reach Your Goals
I bet I know why you didn’t reach your goal. It wasn’t because you didn’t work hard enough, or because you lost motivation, or because you set your goal too high (although all of those things may be true).
You probably made the biggest mistake that most people make when setting goals. Are you ready for it? Here it is…
The biggest mistake when setting goals is… setting goals.
That makes no sense, right? Let me explain.
I’ve worked with dozens of Christians creatives, ministry leaders and business owners over the past few years, and most of them have made the same mistake. If they even had a goal, it was one that “somebody” told them they needed to set.
5,000 people on an email list to get a publishing contract.
Six months of income in the bank to quit their day job.
10,000 page views per month to be accepted by an ad network.
Related: 5 Tips to Achieve Your Goals
Don’t get me wrong. These are perfectly good targets. Necessary, even, in some places.
But none of these very specific goals give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. They are somebody else’s goals. The tactics needed to reach them can be impersonal and formulaic.
“I can’t WAIT to sit down and write a borderline-click-bait headline so more people will view my site!” said no one ever.
Even a highly spiritual-sounding goal like reading the Bible through in a year (again, a perfectly fine goal) can drain your energy and rob your creativity. What if God leads you to camp out in Nehemiah for a month? Will you ever recover enough to meet the goal that you set by the end of the year?
How To Set Goals You Will Achieve This Year
So this is what I am suggesting. We need to change the process we use when we set goals so we can avoid this goal setting mistake. We should be focusing on areas we need to grow and transform. Not taking goals from someone else’s list.
So as you sit down to work on your goals for the new year and the new decade, ask yourself some probing questions, like:
What if I could learn to _________________________?
If only I wasn’t afraid to ______________, I could __________________________.
How would it feel to ____________________________?
When do I have time to ______________________________?
As you search your heart for the answers to questions like these, you are bound to reveal your deepest desires and passions. Ask enough of these questions and you will find trends and themes that run through the answers, like stitches holding together the quilt of your dreams.
Related: Tips To Set Yourself Up For Success in the New Year
Frame your goals around these focus areas, and then those very specific recommendations from the “someones” of this world become one of many ways that you can find progress and transformation this year.
“Build an email list of 5,000” becomes “engage with a community of people I can serve with my gifts and skills.”
“Six months of income” becomes “develop a dependable source of revenue.”
“Attract 10,000 page views” becomes “create content that solves problems and draws people to it.”
“Read the Bible through in a year” becomes “dig deeper into the Word and grow in my understanding of God’s character.”
See what a difference that makes? Those are things that make you get out of bed in the morning.
But don’t ditch the other “goals” just yet. The others can be used as strategies to help you achieve your actual goals. And those strategies can change with the opportunities that God puts in front of you.
Progress and transformation will be determined by how strong you focus on things that really matter, not by how hard you can grind and hustle. So put your focus there and I promise that next year will be better than this year.
Guest Author
Christa Hutchins from Do a New Thing
Christa Hutchins uses tough grace to equip busy communicators and leaders with project management and problem-solving skills so they can turn their big ideas into a successful ministry or business. She lives in south Louisiana with her husband in their delightfully empty nest.
In her Build A Better Year workshop, she’ll let you find your focus areas for 2020 and then create a plan to make progress on your most important goals and dreams. I’m happy to be a sponsor of her workshop this year. Message me for a discount code if you are interested in signing up!
