Resolutions, smesolutions; Who do you want to be this year?
With the new year arriving just after the winter solstice, and the days starting to lengthen, itâs a wonderful time to consider what you want your life to look like over the next year. Perhaps thereâs not a whole lot youâd like to change â which is a fabulous place to be in!
Between the shorter, colder, winter days, and the global pandemic raging on for a third year now, itâs safe to say many of us thought life would be back to a more ânormalâ state by now. So if the thought of taking up another new DIY hobby is wearing you down, youâre not alone.
Perhaps you already read Lifehacks â20 Practical Ways to Improve Yourself Every Dayâ (here for reference of course: https://lifehacks.io/improve-yourself-every-day/), and youâve already learned a new language and tried your hand at plenty of new skills. Perhaps youâve already read every book on your bookshelf and have exhausted your library card checking out everything on your reading list. Maybe youâve had plenty of time to escape into another dimension and build your Minecraft forts and construct pastures to raise animals and crops.
If so, please do share your tips with the rest of us in the comments section below! According to uabmedicine.org, less than 8% of people actually stick to their resolutions each year, even though my guess is that you still set one come January 1st. Why then do we continue to set them?
I remember back in high school, senior year â queue old jokes, yes I can remember that far back â just before graduation, I had this gnawing feeling of dread thinking, âOkay, so what? Whatâs next?â Even the day of graduation â while there was good food, and friends saying heartfelt goodbyes, and family traveled in to celebrate this big achievement â it still somehow felt both underwhelming: âI worked for nearly 18 years, for this?!â and also overwhelming: âI have to become an adult now, childhood is overâ all at once.
This right here, these moments in life where it seems as though youâre crushed by expectations and youâve worked so hard to get to where you are already â this is why goal setting is so important. It keeps us moving, forward.
PositivePsychology.com states that, âSetting goals helps trigger new behaviors, helps guides your focus and helps you sustain that momentum in life. Goals also help align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery.â
The thing is, you may not need to be any different, and certainly you shouldnât feel pressured to change anything about yourself just to âfit inâ or make more money, however goals can help you to focus, and to grow in ways you didnât expect. Not to mention, itâs good for your mental health and accomplishing your goals can be very intrinsically rewarding.
Letâs use a popular example: Steve Jobs and Apple. Thanks to inc.com, we know that âApple lost $867 million in 1996 and its market cap was under $3 billion. In 2011, Apple’s market cap was approximately $300 billion.â He could have retreated and said to himself, âI am the problem, I am unsuccessful, I canât keep going,â however what he said instead was,
âYou can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.â
(Full link: https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/steve-jobs-wanted-what-every-remarkably-successful-person-wants.html#:~:text=Jobs’%20goal%20when%20he%20re,(not%20coincidentally)%20made%20money).
As they say, âhindsight is 20/20,â and we know today that Apple did not crumble but went on to be a billion-dollar tech giant thatâs created millions of jobs and inspired similar products world-wide. The amazing thing is that Apple started out of a garage. If he can do it, why not you?
Even just last year, as I began writing this blog for SUNTEX and knew nothing about âSearch Engine Optimizationâ or keywords â it seemed like an incredibly daunting task. My boss and founder of SUNTEX, Alejandra Mendoza, had tasked me with writing 3-4 blogs each week with the goal of improving our SEO (even though neither of us knew at the time what this really meant).
If you look back to my very first post (here for reference: https://suntexllc.com/new-year-new-look/) you might notice that itâs smaller (which wasnât long enough to improve our SEO stats), had much less detail, and really no voice. It was a blog, sure, by definition, however I didnât feel confident calling myself a âblog writerâ at the time â the concept still felt foreign to me.
So I continued to work on it daily, listened to webinars, sought feedback, and read as much as I could about web design and improving your SEO.
Fast forward one year to now, and our website is on the front page of google, consistently ranks high in SEO âscores,â and weâve even been discovered by lots of new people either applying with the company to work for us, or homeowners searching for home upgrades and energy efficient solutions to save money on their energy bills. Id Est, by the end of the year, we had accomplished our goal of improving our online presence. The rewards have been innumerable, but itâs safe to say the most rewarding part is my own confidence in getting better at something I knew nothing about at the start.
So this year, as you head into the unknown, as we endure another year of what looks like Coronavirus variants and lockdowns to come, ask yourself who you want to be â what you want your life to look like, professionally, personally, spiritually â and start making the small goals to motivate yourself to get there. The world is waiting for your next move, take it.