January 23, 2024

Moving goals forward

How are your goals? 😂

Have you heard? January is self-improvement month. And right about now is when the motivation starts to wane for people.

“Quitter’s Day” is officially the second Friday in January, so congratulations if you’ve made it this far. 

So, why do our goals lose momentum so quickly?

So much has to do with the way we think about and feel about and “do” goals in our culture.

On the one hand, goals can be good for us – they give us direction and clarity and draw us closer to who we want to BE. It’s the approach that can get in the way.

Goals are inherently outcomes. 

BUT – when that’s ALL they are, they can feel like another bullet point on an endless list of things that feel broken.

Author Kate Bowler calls this the “perfectibility paradigm”, where our cultural script of “new year, new you”, poses us as the problem that must constantly be solved.

This paradigm creates an endless loop of “chasing progress” and it only takes a few weeks to get tired of that.

There’s no energy or life in it.

Goals for the sake of having them, don’t resonate for very long. Then quitters feel like failures and that’s no recipe for momentum.

We’ve got to turn our attention to possibility and process and what IS working. We need to turn away from the gaps of where we’re not doing and being enough. Especially as women.

It’s the only way to realize the progress we’re naturally wired for.

We need to see beyond the outcome.

So for today, if you’re seeing yourself as a quitter, I want to remind and encourage you to ask these questions:

🎇 Why did you want this change again?

đŸ„ł What does it serve in your life when you have or do it?

🙌 What are you and others getting out of it when you accomplish or do more of it?

🎯 What are you ALREADY doing that’s moving you toward it?

 Goals should bring us energy and possibility and MORE. Not less.

 What are they creating for you and what are you celebrating about them? And about you?

 Kate Bowler left another important thought with me that I want to leave with you:

 “Beautiful things are mostly unfinish-able.”

 So keep going. You’re doing an amazing job already.