I have never been a big fan of "New Years Resolutions" ... making goals under that premise seems to me.. like making a goal with a pre-prepared excuse for why you didn't carry it out. And that just seems silly. So why not just make a goal and call it what it is... a goal? I also think it's silly to say "this is my goal for the year." At least for myself, if I were to do that, then I'd tell myself that I had the whole year to procrastinate before it was time to evaluate my progress. I think its better to re-evaluate every month or every couple months. You can have the same goal every month for a year, but that way you're always thinking about it.
I am a Social Work major. And this last semester, that meant taking a class in which we had to write treatment plans for our theoretical clients (in this case, specifically children). And, I may or may not have been told by the professor that I was the best out of the class at writing said treatment plans ;) It's moments like that that give me a moment to think to myself "Maybe this really is meant to be my major." Aanyway.. these treatment plans were evaluated on a lot of criteria, but for now I'd like to focus on the fact that they were required to be time limited, objective, and reasonable.
Time limited merely means that you must set a date by which you hope these goals are achieved. This could be three weeks from now, or a year from now. For the purpose of our treatment plans, we had several long term goals (such as a year from now), and then we determined a handful of short term goals that were designed to help the client reach the long term goal. The long term goal could not even be achieved without achieving the short term goals. I think that's one of the major flaws of New Years resolutions. Everyone focuses on the long term goal, but no one bothers to determine the short term goals and interventions they are going to implement in order to reach those long term goals. Doomed for failure.
Objective meant that we had to write each of the goals for our clients in such a way that no matter who was reading that goal, it meant exactly the same thing. No biasing language. No language that could be interpreted in any way. For personal goals I'm not sure how important this is since it's not like I'm showcasing my goals to a caseworker, a judge, a jury, or anything like that. But, I think it's important to define our goals in a clear and concise way so that we know exactly what we're hoping to achieve instead of some vague generalization like "I'm going to get in shape" ... I don't even know what that means with interpretation, let alone without interpretation!
Reasonable. This is one of the biggest things. This is one of the areas of treatment planning that I struggled a little bit in. And I think this is something everyone struggles in when making their resolutions as well. I might make a goal like "I will do X three times a week for six weeks by such and such a date." Time limited. Objective. But is it reasonable? Your first thought might be, well it can't be too hard to do something three times a week, right? So of course it's reasonable. However, if I miss one day, screw up one week... then I can no longer accomplish the goal! This is where so many people fall in their "new years resolutions." Well, I already ate dessert once this month, so now my goal is ruined, so I might as well give up. Or whatever the applicable goal is. That's one of the only mistakes I made in my final treatment plan for this class I mentioned! It would have been better to design the goal to say "I will do X three times a week for at least five out of six weeks by such and such a date." This way I have allowed a little room for mistakes. This way I can still say, "Hey, I missed this week, but now I can resolve once more to completing this goal!"
Anyway... this probably seems a little bit like Emily standing on a soap box... but it was just something I've been thinking about. Hopefully it gives some food for thought when regarding New Years Resolutions and Goals. Soooo there ya go.
"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
-Robert Frost
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