Creating New Goals for the New Year

By: Alecia Carter| January 4, 2023

It’s that time of the year when we begin to think about our goals and resolutions for the year. I don’t know about you, but when setting new personal goals for the year, I may have a hard time coming up with realistic goals. This got me thinking about what the best system or method was for not just setting new goals but setting realistic goals for myself to hopefully accomplish.

Through this discovery and research, I found that the goal-setting system is not the most important factor in creating new goals. I realized that I should focus less on the system and more on the process I take to help me determine which direction I would like to go this year. I thought I’d share that process with you.

Here are 4 steps to guide you in creating new goals for the new year:

Reflect before setting goals.

Before you put pen to paper and start your new year resolutions, take a moment to be calm and quiet with yourself and reflect on the past year. Going through a process where you think about what has happened over the past year to make an informed decision for the next year.

But why is reflection important? Well according to Harvard Business School, reflection is “careful thought”. It is most useful when it involves conscientious consideration and deep analysis of beliefs and actions for the purpose of learning (Harvard Business School). Let's use an example. Your goal last year was to exercise daily. Maybe you didn't quite meet that goal. Should you just set another goal to work out daily without reflecting on why you weren’t able to accomplish this goal? Probably not.

By using what you’ve learned about self-reflection, taking the time to think about why you didn’t meet the goal would serve you better than just setting the goal again. Reflection provides awareness of your previous goals allowing you to celebrate what was accomplished and focus on why other goals weren't. Reflection will help you ensure that your goals for this year will be both relevant and realistic.

Choose the system that works best for you and your lifestyle.

You have reflected on the past year and are now ready to develop your goals for the new year. That’s great! However, before you just write them down and move on you should probably choose a system that allows you to track your goals throughout the year. There are several different types of goal-setting systems out there, from SMART goals to OKRs. There is an article by Indeed that provides 10 different goal-setting systems that you can choose from and there is no evidence that one system is better than another.

Using a goal-setting system shouldn't be based on what you have read or heard or that it’s the only goal-setting system that you’re familiar with. It should be based on what you are looking to accomplish. For your professional goals, you may want to use SMART goals or OKRs, look up both methods and other methods to determine the best one for you. For your personal goals, like building habits, you may want an entirely different approach, like James Clear's Atomic Habits to achieve personal growth. Where you focus on more continuous growth and less on the finish line. The bottom line is the best goal-setting system is going to be the system that best suits the type of goals you have and your lifestyle.

Set yourself up for success.

Have you ever heard of micro-goals? The idea is to break down your big goal into smaller ones that can build up to the big goal. Apparently, our brains like short-term goals, and I can understand this. We like quick wins. They can build momentum in our behavior and motivate us to keep going. Psychology Today believes we can manipulate that chemical in our brain called dopamine by breaking our goals into steps and celebrating each step along the way. Behavior scientist B.J. Fogg discusses this with NPR regarding his book Tiny Habits, a method of scaling a habit down to its most basic and simplest state, giving you no excuse to not do it, allowing you to build and grow that habit over time.

For example, when paying off debt, the snowball method uses this science to motivate individuals to keep paying off their debt. You start with the smaller credit cards, and as you pay off the smaller cards, you're motivated by the momentum of seeing debt shrink. It doesn’t matter that the debt would shrink if you started with the larger one first, our brain sees the first card paid off and feels good about it. So why not think about our goals in the same manner?

Make space to refresh & restart.

Think of this as a reflection period on the goals you've set for this year. We’ve already gone over why reflection is important before creating new goals, but what about in the middle of your goal journey? Well making space to reflect on your goals, means you are making space to determine whether they are still realistic or relevant and change them. We should all make a habit of giving ourselves grace when it comes to our goals. By doing this, you give yourself space to grow and create goals that grow with you as opposed to against you.

This could be done by creating time in your schedule to sit with yourself and think about the last three months. What went well and what didn't? Is there anything holding you back from achieving your goals? Is it time to change the goal entirely? Who made the rule that once we create a goal, it must stay the same regardless of new circumstances? We’re all human beings, meaning that we are constantly evolving, and our goals should evolve as we do, not after.

Wellness as a goal.

If I could leave you with one final thought about going through this process, it would be to create space for wellness. We don’t speak enough about wellness in this field. We don’t give it enough focus. We know that it's important, and we know that we want to talk about it. However, we’re not exactly sure how to create space for it in our daily lives. As caregivers, we naturally put others first. However, if we don’t take the time daily to take care of ourselves, we eventually won’t be able to take care of others. So, I encourage you, while going through this process, set a goal that puts your well-being first. Set a goal that intentionally creates space for you to focus on your social, physical, and mental wellness.