Setting Realistic Resolutions
“Everything changes NOW!” bark those ambitious New Year’s resolutions. Your mind snaps to attention but then shifts into foggy overwhelm as it considers the drastic changes you’ll have to implement immediately, and then your eyes glaze over. Sound familiar? After so many years of feeling the pressure to come up with some great thing to change, I’m not a huge fan. Instead, I like to think of the goals I want to achieve in the new year. We parents have things we want to do for our family and with our family. We also want to be good role models for our kids and teach them good habits and life skills. How do we go about doing this? First, we have to start implementing these habits in our own lives. Kids naturally watch what we do and take it as an example of what they should do themselves.
Let’s start with expectations. We can’t keep ourselves on track and keep moving forward if we don’t know what our expectations for our own yearly goals are. As we have well learned by now, life changes and throws curveballs at us. This means our goals will most likely have to shift around at some point to fit where our lives are going. I used to be so strict with myself that if something didn’t go perfectly in line with how it started and how I imagined it, I was done. New goal! I’ve learned that in order to make something happen, I have to adjust and pivot to deal with whatever comes at me. I’m sure lot of people can relate with being your own worst critic and being overly hard on yourself. Well, I’ve also learned to expect something will happen to throw me off, but I also expect to roll with the changes and learn to fit my goal into wherever I am at that moment. I give myself grace and a little pat on the back for not giving up. After all, I still want to make those things happen, even if things look a little different in the end.
Parents, what goals do you have for yourselves for the year? Even if we do manage our kids, there are still things we want to do personally. Having and sharing goals also shows our kids we are more than just a mom or dad. We are our own people, too. These goals don’t have to be lofty and larege undertakings. They might be as simple as finally finishing a photo album or redoing a part of the house. Even small goals require lots of tedious steps and some time to accomplish. Come up with the small, manageable steps to get those projects done and start to take action. Action is key.
Sit down as a family and talk about what everyone wants to make happen over the year. If your kids are old enough to provide input, I suggest letting them do that. We humans tend to feel more valued and want to participate more when we have input into decision making. In my personal experience, we also take more responsibility.
Kids start wanting independence at an early age. Coaching them about goals is a great way to let them start gaining that independence. From an early age, teach them how to set goals and how to achieve them by breaking them down into manageable steps. Let them tell you what they want to do—you might even find out things about them you didn’t know! Teaching kids to do this will also teach them how to take life in small steps they can accomplish rather than attacking a momentous task in one impossible try.
The last—very important—part? Follow-through. Goals are great, but unless we follow up with action, they are just ideas. Here is my list of tips for following through.
- Be realistic about your goals. It’s exciting to have lofty goals, but if they are too big, you might get overwhelmed instead of chipping away at the small things.
- Don’t pick things you won’t do. Some things sound great to do, but if you’re honest with yourself, you know you won’t do it. Leave those for a different time.
- Plan as much as possible. When you come up with activities to move toward a goal, put them in the schedule. Often, we have a great idea and then dismiss it and move on. Take two minutes to block time out and make it happen.
- Find activities that are fun. Goal setting and achieving seems like a boring thing. Find a way to make it fun for you and your family. Mix some fun into the activities that are helping you achieve your goal. Find friends who want to do it with you.
- Add something to your life instead of getting rid of it. I always thought of a resolution as something I’m going to take away so I could fix a part of my life or make it better. Someone once mentioned adding something. I thought that was a good spin!
If you are tired of being part of the group for which, come February, resolutions have fallen off your radar because of life’s happening, shift the way you think. I used to glaze over when someone asked me what my New Year’s resolution was. I always felt like the goals I set were not big enough or were too insignificant to qualify for a New Year’s resolution. The good news is we get to decide what the right resolutions and goals are for us. And big or small, they should be things that excite us to get out of bed or add satisfaction to the end of our day.
Goal setting doesn’t have to be for planning nerds. It’s for anyone who wants to be proud of what she accomplished throughout the year. It’s for those who are sick of looking back and saying, “I have no idea what happened to this year or what I did, but I was busy.” Don’t be another New Year’s resolution statistic. Come up with some goals with your family that work for all of you and have some fun with it.
Lauren Dreher lives in Stilwell with her husband and two toddlers..