Why setting personal goals is important?
If you’re still on Facebook and if you follow Mark Zuckerberg, you would know he sets himself personal goals every year. Some of them have nothing to do with work. Until a few years ago, it was very new to me as all my goals were set by my boss :-)
I tried following Mark Zuckerberg when he announced the Year of books & Year of running both of which I failed miserably and gave up setting personal goals.
In the beginning of 2017, I stumbled upon an interesting article where the author talked about why is it important to have LIFE outside work & How being part of a community aids in the thinking and discovery processes.
I decided to set personal goals for 2017. But wait! Goals were meant to be like “reach for the stars so that you could at least get to the moon” right? Well I did that mistake too.
First goal of the year was to take care of my SELF.
I set a hard target of 5 days a week of yoga classes from where I was doing NOTHING! And guess what? I survived 3 classes and dropped from the class the following month. And then a friend suggested I set smaller, achievable goals that upon completion gives the much needed motivation to strive for more.
After that eureka moment, I set myself 5 goals in 2017 to bring the discipline of spending time and effort to achieve them.
- Be in the present
At the beginning of the year, I was spending way too much of my time at work and carrying work back home and was spending very little time with my 3 year old. Guilty-Mommy Syndrome kicked-in and I wanted to fix it. I started posting #100HappyDays on insta. Things that made me happy everyday for 100days! And most of my happiness stems from her and we enjoyed doing a bunch of activities together. This brought a discipline of researching pinterest boards and choosing and prepping activities for her week after week.
2. Spend quality me-time
It is important to have me-time to unwind, relax, reflect, retrospect and re-charge your batteries. This is one such occasion where I went on a road trip with friends! What’s even more exciting is I tried something that I was scared of for a long time! Driving on a National Highway.
3. Do things I love/enjoy
Born & brought up in Chennai, the city has left a lasting impression on various art forms. I was lucky enough and had opportunities to try different art forms — classical music;dance;instruments. When I moved base to Bangalore I enrolled in this music school — Dolce Music Academy. With Vino teacher’s constant motivation & school’s support I graduated initial grades in music awarded by Trinity College of music
4. Try something new
Running for marathons has been on my todo for quite sometime. And the last time I ran was……..….in my high school perhaps! And with folks around me enthusiastic about an upcoming marathon, enticed (forced?) me to enroll to a 10k midnight run! It looked impossible and scary. Well, I survived the run and 5 more 10k runs after that.
Until a year ago, Writing wasn’t my cup of tea. At least, I thought so. But it’s such a revelation once I tried my hands on writing. It’s a terrific learning process. I have had multitude thoughts, questions popping up when I write and I research more to learn more. I have to patiently practice to get better at writing and here is a beautiful blog by Scott Adams(Dilbert blog) on how can one get better at writing. I am a work-in-progress.
5. Get back to reading books — A lifelong partner
I use to read a lot of books back in school and college and somewhere down the lane (thanks to inshorts, twitter and FB) I lost touch. Longed to get back to the habit of reading and believe me it was incredibly difficult with the amount of distractions around! My goal was to finish 6 books while I ended up at 5!
(PS: LeanIn, Option B, Zappos, When breathe becomes air, Auto-biography of a yogi)
While I couldn’t meet the goals I had set, I am satisfied that I could come this far and that keeps me going for 2018. Habit changing is a LOT of hard work and one thing that worked for me was to be part of a community that made the transformation easy.
Do you set goals for yourself? I’d love to know what they are. Leave in comments.
