Belle Binder Section One: Making Goals Part Two

So last time we talked about types of goal lists, now lets talk about how to make goals.

So how do we make goals?

All of your goals do not need to be big things.  Think of how hard this list would seem if all of the goals were things like “quit smoking,” “have $5000 in savings,” or “purchase first house.”  You would probably want to throw your binder across the room at the thought of goals like that, right?  (I know these aren’t necessarily applicable to you in particular, of course.)

Now, go pick your binder back up.  It is perfectly acceptable for some of your goals to be things like “Watch Titanic sixteen times” (which I had on my list, and completed, in 2011).  This is your list, so even if other people may think something little is silly, you put it on your list.

A perfect example of this is “ride a horse” on my list.  Other people would either scoff at such a simple thing being on a year list, or they would like the idea of it and they would write something similar on their list, but it would likely end up in the binder hurling form of “conquer my fears.”  Sometimes these things take baby steps.

But, at the same time, you don’t want everything on your list to be goals like “watch Titanic sixteen times” or “learn the words to Wagon Wheel” (setting aside the fact that knowing the words to Wagon Wheel is a life necessity anyway), because then you will plow through all of your “goals” in a week or two, look at your binder in dismay before you set it in a box to collect dust and wonder what the point of this was in the first place.

It is important to have a balance.  If everything is too hard, time consuming, expensive, etcetera you will find some reason to not want to do it, or not be able to do it.  If everything is too easy, then it’s less making goals and more writing a to-do list.  You could easily learn the words to Wagon Wheel all in one day if you just listened to it on repeat as you did other things (but again, the words to Wagon Wheel should be ingrained in everyone’s brain already).  At the same time, you don’t want everything to be a middle-ground thing.

So how do you make that balance?

Well, it’s okay to start broad.  It’s okay to say “this year, I really want to conquer my fears.”  But if you’re pretty much afraid of everything under the sun that it’s a wonder you make it out of your house on any given day, then you may not conceivably be able to conquer all of your fears in one year.  In that case, it’s okay to just pick one fear and start there.  After all, you have a lifetime to conquer your fears, why do it all at once, right?  These are still big things.

It’s also okay to start small.  You might know that you really want to see the world some day, so it’s okay to decide that you’ll start seeing the world in your own back yard by visiting a famous place in Colorado every month.  There’s probably plenty of places right around you that you hadn’t even ever thought to visit before and even a nearby experience can be a great one.

And you can have some daunting things on there.  Like “getting your first car” or “getting your first apartment.”  Sometimes, it’s okay to think about the things you really need and make it an active process to work toward them.  Think about how good it will feel to accomplish a big thing on your list.

This is also the reason you can put some little things on your list too.  Maybe it’s been a really tough month and you’re running out of steam and you wanted to “do the Sunday crossword puzzle every week,” it would be something you started looking forward to and could cheer you up.  And, if you’ve attempted fifty-two crossword puzzles by the end of the year, it suddenly seems like a bigger thing than when you first wrote it down, right?

And when you can mix together broad, small, big, and little things, it becomes a pretty good list.  Think about the things everyone says they want to do in life.  They’re not all big, important, or time-consuming things.  Some of them are small, menial things that other people might do every day.

Think about what you want to do.  Think about what you need.  Start big and break down.  Start small and build up.  Think about ways you can start to work toward your long-term goals.  Think about ways you can complete your short-term goals.  This is your list.  Focus on you.

 

Next time: Some examples.