January 1 is just around the corner. Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions and goals! What’s the difference between the two? Is one better than the other? Why should we even set goals? This is always front of mind for me this time of the year, so I decided to dig into the whys and my own process in a three-part series on goal setting.
New Year’s Resolutions
Whether you set them or not, resolutions = new year. “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” we may ask our family or friends. “Eat healthier,” “exercise more,” or “clean the kitchen sink every night,” we say. With New Year’s Resolutions, we resolve to start a good habit, stop a bad habit, or change our behavior in some way.
But we often stop with the resolution.
We don’t necessarily come up with a plan of action associated with that behavior change. We may not even have any clear reasons behind it other than knowing it’s good for us, so we should start, or it’s bad for us, so we should stop.
That’s why as many as 80% of us fail to keep our New Year’s Resolutions by February (source). I have definitely been in that camp!
Goals
A true goal, on the other hand, is more specific. I’ve geeked out on goal-setting (maybe you can tell!), so I have learned that a goal should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
Before you set these words aside and say something like, “I don’t need to set goals. I just live my life and enjoy every minute.” Stick with me. We all have goals, but we might not call them that. Do you clean your toilets once a week? Then somewhere, you decided that’s a goal you should meet weekly. Brush your teeth after eating? Another “goal.” Are you working towards something? Improving your diet? Saving for vacation? Getting a promotion? Retiring? Writing a book (that’s me!)? Loving your friends and family well? I’m almost positive your answer is yes.
So can we agree? We all have goals of some sort–call them whatever you want– New Year’s resolutions, intentions, projects, hopes, or dreams.
But . . . and this is a big but . . . we don’t all practice goal-setting. Goal-setting is the action behind the goals. It’s the process of deciding what needs to be done and coming up with a plan to do it.
Maybe you’ve tried goal setting, and you hated it. Maybe you’ve mastered it, and you don’t need any guidance. If either of those are you, feel free to leave this post now. No pressure. (But I hope you’ll hang out until the end and change your mind!)
Or maybe you’re like me, and you love setting goals. Or maybe you want to love goal setting but it’s always a work in progress. This series is especially for you (all are welcome, though). Over the next three weeks I’m digging into goal setting, starting with the WHY. Why set goals and the why behind your goals.
Why set goals?
As a Christ-follower, I believe God calls us to use our resources, time, and talents wisely. Remember the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25? Jesus tells the story of a master and three servants. He gives each servant some talents to manage while he’s away. The first two servants invest the talents and reap the rewards. The third servant buries his share out of fear.
When the master returns, he praises the first two servants, saying “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21, 23). The third, he reprimands, saying “You wicked, and slothful servant!” (Matt. 25:26). He takes the third servant’s talent and gives it to the first.
The lesson of this parable is more than how we manage our financial resources. In a sermon this fall, our pastor preached on this passage and reminded us that we are always stewards of something. Money, time, energy. And how we steward things depends on our view of God. The servant who hid his money? He believed his master was a hard man. He was afraid of his master! Did that servant know his master? Nope.
Using God’s Gifts
So what does this have to do with goal-setting? Our “master” is the Lord and He has given us oodles of gifts. Oodles. (The cool thing is that the best gift of all is one we do not earn. Our souls don’t have to work. That work was finished on the cross.)
The blog, The Theology of Work explains, “God has given each person a wide variety of gifts, and he expects us to employ those gifts in his service. It is not acceptable merely to put those gifts on a closet shelf and ignore them.”
These gifts include our finances, skills, time, abilities, family connections, social positions, education, experiences, and more. God calls us to use our gifts to serve others.
Vocation
All of this talk about theology might make you wonder what your work as an accountant or stay-at-home mom has to do with your Christian vocation. Should we drop our jobs and lives to serve God as missionaries in another country? Go back to school for theology? Or only work for a Christian company or nonprofit? Maybe, but probably not. I wrote about some of this here.
In my faith tradition, we talk a lot about vocation, our various callings as spouses, parents, friends, church members, citizens, and workers. Gene Edward Veith cites Gustaf Wingren’s Luther on Vocation, saying “God does not need our good works, Luther said, but our neighbor does”:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 22:37-40
According to Veith, we love God by faith, and we “love our neighbors as ourselves by vocation. We love them not just by internal feelings or by isolated acts of virtue, but in the entire course of ordinary life, which becomes the realm of ‘faith working through love’ (Gal. 5:6).” (Emphasis mine.)
The practice of goal setting is one way to make better use of our resources, our lives, for the purpose of loving our neighbors as ourselves. Unlike the third servant in the Parable of the Talents, when we set goals, we are investing our resources so we can see them grow and be fruitful for service to others.
And for those of us who are in our second half of life, perhaps nearing the end of our careers or retired, goal setting is still extremely important–for health and for those around us. My friend Judy wrote beautifully about this here.
The Benefits of Goal Setting
God wants us to do things that are good for us. Using our gifts intentionally through goal setting comes with lots of benefits. Practicing goal setting helps us:
#1. Focus on what’s important.
Setting good goals helps us identify and focus on what’s really important. Through the process of goal setting, we define what matters, set goals in line with our values, and move forward with focus and attention and purpose. We keep our eyes on what matters instead of getting side tracked by other, less important to-dos. I can get completely distracted by emails, social media, playlists, research – you name it! – when I sit down to write if I don’t set a goal!
#2. Get and stay motivated.
Good goals motivate us and encourage us to develop strategies that will help us improve–whether that’s in fitness, our work, or our personal lives. As we check in with our goals and our progress toward them, we can make tweaks. For example, I may need to cut back on sugary desserts to lose more weight healthily. Or limit shopping trips to save more money for vacation. Or schedule protected writing time to hit my daily word count. These tweaks can feel exciting if we’re checking in our goals, seeing progress, and remembering our why.
#3. Feel satisfaction in our work and lives.
When we accomplish a goal, we see progress in an area of life that’s important to us. We feel satisfied and motivated to set another goal, stretching ourselves to keep progressing. (On the other hand, if you don’t accomplish the goal, it can lead to frustration and lower motivation. More on that another day.)
How to Set Goals
Now that we’ve covered WHY to set goals, it’s time to start the goal setting process. The goal setting process has four main parts. Here’s the structure:
- Area of Focus: These are the priorities that make up your life. They might include Faith, Family, Health, Friends, Work, Hobbies, and Home. You may want to start with a wonderful outline of our vocations, the different ways that we are called.
- Goals: Goals flow from your area of focus. If you want to see improvement in your health, you might set a goal to lose a certain number of pounds or lower your cholesterol to a healthier number. In my experience, setting quarterly or even monthly goals has been more effective than setting goals for the entire year. Things change too much from season to season!
- Objectives: Goals are made up of objectives–those mile markers and project completions that will be needle movers toward your goal. For the book I’m writing, objectives look like creating the story outline, finishing the second draft, and making suggested changes from my editor.
- Steps: Objectives should be broken down into steps: the smallest pieces of goal setting. We should aim to make these as small and as actionable as possible. These little actions–frequently, habits–will move you towards your goals, little by little, day by day.
Start with Why
Before you can set good goals, you have to decide who you are and where you’re going. The first step is to identify your why. Ask yourself:
- What’s important to you?
- What do you want to focus on in the coming months?
- Who am I in this season?
- What am I called to do?
This should help you narrow down your areas of focus for your goals. Maybe you have little ones at home, and you know you’re called to be a mother in this season. Or maybe you’re in line to get a promotion at work, and you know you can serve better from a new position. Maybe your doctor just told you that you need to lower your blood pressure, and you know you need to focus on your health.
Does this help? Your goals should flow from your circumstances and your season of life. This will ensure that your goals work for you today, instead of forcing yourself to work on things you feel like you “should” do. When I was in the busy season of raising my children and teaching, I wanted to write a book. I felt like I should write a book. I felt like I could write a book. But that would have made me crazier than a chicken with its head cut off. It wasn’t the right season for writing a book. God said “wait.”
You can have goals in more than one area of focus, but I’d suggest you don’t spread yourself too thin. We can’t work towards everything at the same time!
In some seasons of life, this is very clear. In other seasons, after my kids left the house, for example, I felt a little lost. Who am I now? Where does the Lord want me to serve? If you’re struggling with this step, a tool like Cultivate What Matters’ Powersheets might be helpful. I’ll share more about them next week, but for now I’ll say that the reflections and prep work have helped me in seasons of transition when I didn’t know how to start.
Action Step: Pick Your Word of the Year
Once you understand your season and what you’re called to do now, I encourage you to pick a word of the year. Instead of a rigid resolution, a word of the year can serve as a gentle reminder to create change in your life. It flows with you from season to season and allows for changes in life circumstances. But it also can be a guiding piece as you set new goals every few months.
Your word of the year can serve as your intention or your theme for the year. For example, one year my word was FOCUS. My goals throughout the year flowed from that.
How to Choose Your Word of the Year
1. Pray.
Always the first step. Always.
2. Reflect on the last year.
Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side, write everything that went well. Dig deep–think of as many good things as you can. On the right side, write everything that could be improved, things that maybe didn’t go as well as you’d hoped.
3. Reflect on what’s important.
Take some time to journal your answers to the questions I posed above:
- What’s important to you?
- What do you want to focus on in the coming months?
- Who am I in this season?
- What am I called to do?
4. Brain dump ideas for your word.
Write down ideas for themes. What do you want more of this coming year? Look up definitions, synonyms, and connotations for your word ideas. This will help you narrow down your list and spark new ideas you may not have thought of. One of the resources I started using this past year is called Logos 365. I love it! It’s part of the Visual Faith practice I’ve shared before. They have a lovely practice which expands your word for the year and makes it richer and faith-filled.
5. Finally, pick your word of the year.
You don’t have to rush this. Sit with your list for a few days. Pray again. Take a day to try on a word and see how it feels. My goal (ha ha) is to have my word of the year picked before we talk again next week. Will you join me?
See you then.
In case you’ve missed a set, here’s the other posts from this Goal Setting Series:
Part 1: Why Set Goals? (Plus, Pick Your Word of the Year)
Part 3: How to Create an Action Plan for Your Goals
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