Why you are not achieving the goals you set

How large goals can actually do more harm by putting you one step forward and two steps back

I always look forward to January. I love the New Years and how it is a time of year where goal setting is prioritized.  

But year after year, I’ve found myself either not committing fully to the goals I had set or not completing as many of the goals as I had wanted too.  

During the peak of COVID, specifically during the new year of 2020, the act of creating a vision board gave me a chance to shed light on the year ahead in a new way. 

Creating a vision board entails creating a collage with pictures, quotes and words that you would hope to make up the following year. It’s a simplistic and great way to reuse waste as well in the house. 

As a student, it can become immensely difficult to set and stick to these goals, as one is at the point in their life where they are prioritizing their academics rather than dreams and desires. 

One of my New Year's resolutions was to bake more. Unfortunately, I did not get to bake as much as I wanted to, as I found myself preoccupied by my academics and work. Many individuals often do the same, finding themselves with their hands full, which cuts back on many goals one could be achieving.  

The difficulty of this task depends upon the relationship someone has to it. The same goal can be easy for one person and even more challenging for another, so it’s all relative; which is something our society does not even take into consideration with the commotion that is New Years.

Something that is very crucial, which many individuals do not consider, is their lifestyle and who they are as a person. Every individual is unique; thus, every individual is driven and motivated in different ways from different things. Although one may assume they are setting a goal for themselves, a common mistake made is that the goal is either not as specific as it should be or too general. 

Setting a goal such as baking more is a great goal, but it is too broad for someone to stick to it. Creating some sort of consistency with it allows you to be able to track it and setting small, reasonable goals for you can drastically aid in achieving the goals you wish to. 

Instead, set goals for how many times a week or month you would want to do this act and then you can get more detailed with your goals. Again, mine with baking: my goal can be to cook a dessert at least two times a month, then after some consistency, I can change my goal to not make the same recipe more than once or try a new ingredient each time I bake. 

Therefore, giving yourself more personalized goals that fit your lifestyle as well as your needs will aid you to achieve them. Making sure that those goals are thought-out and detailed will also help you build consistency around them. 

Although it may seem obvious, we tend to move with everyone else almost all the time. Vision boards allow us an opportunity to reflect on what’s important to us and it is important when we are doing activities for our own well-being that we are genuinely keeping ourselves in mind and no one else.