January Wellness Spotlight

January 1, 2025

New Year, New Goals!

In the past, have you set New Year’s resolutions? How often did you stick to those resolutions? Studies have shown that 80% of New Year’s resolutions are cast aside, forgotten, or ignored by the beginning of February. Why is this? Often, resolutions are vague or very broad in scope. For instance, setting a resolution to be healthier does not define an individual’s definition of ‘healthier’. Does this statement mean eating healthier food? Losing weight? Practicing meditation? Resolutions are open-ended without specific guidelines, measurable outcomes, or achievable tasks. This Wellness Spotlight discusses goal setting for this year, how to follow SMART goals, and the importance of reflecting on your goals.

Goal Setting

Based on quantitative research, goal setting has been shown to improve self-regulation and set behavior changes. Goal setting is a motivational technique that can have positive impacts on productivity, career success, and work/life balance. Reflective goal setting suggests that becoming self-aware and reflecting on goal outcomes further facilitates goal achievement.

Self-Reflection

One of the best ways to set future goals is to assess and reflect on the past and current goals. This helps determine where you want to be in the future and what achievable goals will help you get there. The concept behind reflective goal setting suggests the act of writing and reflecting promotes more motivation. The act of recording goals and reflection encourages visualization, planning, and implementation.

Questions to ask yourself include:

What worked well in the past year?
What did you struggle with?
Did you use your time wisely?
What challenges did you enjoy?
What were some lessons you learned?
What did you do for self-care?

Reflection takes self-awareness, courage, and unbiased thoughtfulness. Reflection is not about criticizing or punishing yourself but rather a way to assess mistakes, successes, and outcomes to guide you in future development.

Once you have reflected on the previous year a picture should begin to form in your head about where you want to be in the next year. Setting goals based on your reflection addresses certain results from the previous year that you might want to change in the future. Goals should have personal meaning to encourage fortitude in success.

Reflective goal setting is not task lists but rather the result that progresses you toward your future conceptualized self. If goals become too numerous and task-like, step back and look at the larger picture. Ask yourself what you need to accomplish to get to where you want to be. Reflective goal setting requires continuous reflection in order for progress to be documented.

SMART Goals

Goal-Setting Theory encompasses three parts: concepts, constructs, and proposition. In summary, Goal Setting Theory explains goals as concepts that influence a person’s motivation, which then impacts the individual’s performance. Therefore, specificity, a person’s ability or strategies to complete a goal will affect performance. The SMART goal format can be useful when setting goals for yourself.

Specific – Answer the question, what do you want to accomplish and why is it important to you?

Studies show that specificity with goals encourages motivation.
Setting challenging goals has also been proven to increase productivity.

Measurable – Make sure your goals are quantifiable and can be controlled by you.

This could include data collection, i.e. surveys or productivity results.
For personal goals this might include self-reflection and defining success of the goal.

Achievable – Determine a goal that is achievable, a bigger goal broken into smaller tasks for instance.

Also, determine what skills might be required to complete the goal.
Making a plan to accomplish the goal can also make the goal more manageable.

Relevance – Is this goal important to you and why? Will this goal help you in your life at present?

A goal should have relevance to a larger goal whether this is a broad scope to a work goal or a personal life achievement.

Time bound – Give yourself a deadline for your goal. A deadline will motivate you to accomplish your goals.

Setting realistic deadlines keeps the goal moving forward.
Incorporating a list of deadlines for smaller tasks within the goal encourages focus.

The SMART Goal format breaks a goal into parts that offers a quantitative outline. Following the SMART Goal format also promotes goal development and increases the effectiveness of a goal.

Conclusion

Write down your goals. By physically writing your goals down somewhere you will see them every day, your list acts as a reminder to keep building toward those goals. Be flexible because you are constantly growing and adapting as a person, therefore, your goals should also adapt to you as a person and your changing life.

Goals illustrate what we value in life and, therefore, connect us to what we believe is a larger purpose in life. When setting goals, it is also important to keep track of your progress, to reflect on your achievements.

Keeping a journal is an excellent way to track your progress and comment on whether your goals are manageable and achievable. Reflecting in a journal can provide perspective on goals and how to best reach them. Try not to judge yourself when reflecting if you didn’t quite reach a goal or made a mistake. Your reflection is your personal feedback to help you on the path forward and to improve the effectiveness of your goal setting.