Not being able to see the future is a priceless gift for humans, and many times I have thought about what life would look like if we could see what the future holds for us.
My mom always said that if everyone knew when they would succeed in life, no one would make any move to become successful; everyone would just wait for that time. It's as simple as waiting until that day before doing whatever it is that would make us successful, but it's the other way around – we just have to keep pushing until and after getting things right. Our goals never end; there will always be something we want to achieve after every achievement. Humans' desire for more ends only when we die.
Setting goals at the beginning of the year is a habit I cultivated a long time ago after I learned the importance of it and understood its purpose. Many people misunderstand the importance of setting their goals and allow themselves to feel dejected when they don't meet these goals within the intended time frame.
To my understanding, setting these goals helps me stay on track with my objectives. I can easily see what I have achieved and what's left. It helps me organize my goals so I don't start with the wrong one or mix things up halfway through. Not achieving all the goals we had in the previous year doesn't make anyone a failure because we applied effort, but things just didn't work as planned. To me, a person only becomes a failure when he or she refuses to try.
Not meeting up with my goals didn't start last year; I have experienced it a lot of times because firstly, I don't go easy with my goals. I am fond of always making goals bigger than what I can easily achieve, and even if I don't achieve them all, it's not the end of the world for me.
I always tell my siblings and friends that every 31st of December marks the end of every year, not the end of our lives. Whenever we can't achieve all our goals before the end of the year, the New Year is another opportunity for us to try again. I actually don't see any reason to do away with my goals from the previous year if I could not achieve them, and I just make new ones.
As huge as these goals may be, I try not to feel pressured because that's one of the things that makes people feel exhausted halfway. I take things one after the other and just move at my own pace.
If by the middle of the year, I am nowhere near my yearly goals or things aren't going as planned, I will feel bad just like every other person but it will be just for a very short moment because wallowing in the disappointment of not achieving anything is powerful enough to prevent us from trying again. The remaining half of the year might look like a very short time, but a lot can still happen if we are still willing to achieve those goals.
I will take time to examine my goals again for any error, no one is above making mistakes. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons why I set my goals is to make sure they are organized. Having unorganized goals can cause stagnancy or setbacks. Let's imagine someone who wants to build a house but decides to buy the roofing sheets first instead of the land – it wouldn't make any sense. If that was a goal, it should start with buying the land, and the rest would follow.
So when things aren't going as planned, I take my time to check for possible errors I have made with the goals, and whether I find a fault or not, I move on to checking my approach towards these goals.
Our goals would remain just goals without doing the right things to achieve them. Sometimes we can have great goals, but our approach is wrong and won't yield any results. I would check if what I am doing to achieve the goals is right or enough and make amendments immediately. All I need to do is check my record in the last six months and figure out what things I will do differently. With the mindset of doing things differently, I will seek more knowledge from experienced people and acquire more resources if necessary. Finally, I take another shot at those goals again and hopefully expect things to work out smoothly.
On paper, this is enough to achieve my goals, but in reality, it doesn't work that way because life can be very unpredictable. Everything I explained above still doesn't guarantee that I will get the expected results by the end of the year because a lot of unexpected things can pop out of nowhere to disrupt my results, but I am not a failure. I have tried and definitely acquired knowledge from trying several times, and that's enough to prevent me from making more future errors with my goals.
Since I am not discarding my previous goals, the new year will just be another time to combine all my experiences/knowledge and take another shot.
My response to the Dreemport & Thinkerscorner prompt for this week. Feel free to participate, LINK to the prompt post by @kenechukwu97.