We all have goals we work towards in our life, whether big or small, short-term or long-term. For example, I set a goal to write this blog post, and at least I started. Will I finish? I guess we’ll see. In life there are going to be obstacles to completing goals. Sometimes the worst obstacle is ourselves. We have thoughts like “I’ll fail”, “I don’t have the skills for this”, or “I have too many things to do”. Here are some strategies to reduce the impact of these obstacles.
First, make sure your goals are specific. The more general our goals are the harder they are to follow through with and harder to know where to start. For example, the goal “I want to be a better person”. What does that even mean? Where would you start? Now, if to you being a good person means volunteering, then that is a more achievable goal.
Second, goals too large can be overwhelming. When we think of the goal we get anxious and then we avoid it to feel better. We can try to short circuit that overwhelming feeling by breaking down goals in to smaller steps. Clean the whole house sounds overwhelming vs spend 10 minutes vacuuming the downstairs feels a lot more doable. Stay tuned for more tips on completing your goals.
