The new year is a time we’re supposed to reflect on our achievements of the past 12 months and set ourselves goals for the next – resolutions which are supposed to transform our lives for the better. Common resolutions include giving up or reducing drinking or smoking, exercising more, or learning a new skill. We might imagine what our new lives will look like after this fresh start – perhaps I’ll be running a marathon in March or being offered a promotion in February? Perhaps I’ll be a healthier, happier, better version of myself?
However, if you’re reading this on the date it is published, 26th January, there is a high chance you’ve already broken any resolutions you made this year. Polls suggest that by as early as the 12th January over half of us have broken our commitment to dry January, and as many as 80% of us have given up on our resolutions by the end of January.
Not meeting our resolutions can make us feel a bit rubbish! We can tell ourselves we’ve failed, or feel hopeless about ever making the positive changes we want for ourselves. So how can we avoid this psychological pitfall?
How you set your goals
The very first step is identifying what your goal is. Resolutions are often framed as giving something up – I won’t drink, I won’t smoke, I won’t eat chocolate, I won’t worry… Whilst these can be admirable goals, with clear health and wellbeing benefits, they can also be very hard to meet as they can be broken with a single misstep. Any goal that outright bans something is sometimes called a ‘dead man’s goal’ because a dead man is always going to be better at reaching the goal than any of us are.
Conversely, it can be tempting to have goals that involve doing lots: I’m going to walk 10,000 steps every day, practice Duolingo every morning, eat a salad every lunchtime… Again, these are often admirable goals, but they can again set us up to fail by delineating a clear pass/fail, which our brains often interpret as good/bad. This is made even worse when the goals we set for ourselves are very high or ambitious – whilst ambition is no bad thing, it can be problematic when we link our sense of self-worth with our ability to consistently meet our ambitions.
But a goal is, by it’s nature, an ambitious bar that we aim to reach, isn’t it? In many ways, yes! It is ok to have high standards for ourselves and to dream big. The trick is in uncoupling this from how we view ourselves and what it means to meet or miss our goals. The two main ingredients for setting helpful goals are: linking them to our values, and having self-compassion.
Values driven goals
Our values and goals are related but separate ideas. Our values are the reasons that particular goals are important to us – for example, my goal might be to exercise more often because I value being in good health. You can think about it by imagining you are a bus driver. The bus stops you reach are the goals that you achieve, but the direction in which you are travelling are your values. You will never reach ‘North’, but you can keep travelling that way. Similarly, whilst you can achieve goals and tick them off the list, you can’t achieve values. I might achieve running 10k, but I can’t achieve ‘health’ – that’s an ongoing effort that I make through entire constellations of behaviour.
To what degree we are successfully living to our values has a huge impact on our psychological wellbeing. If we are not behaving in ways that are consistent with our values we are likely to feel low and stressed. So how do you know if you are meeting your values? First it can be helpful to identify what matters most to you. Whilst there are no rules for what ‘counts’ as a value, there are lists of commonly chosen areas that you can review and decide which strike a chord for you. These include:
- Family
- Friendships
- Intimate relationships
- Parenting
- Religion or spirituality
- Community
- Leisure
- Work
- Self-improvement
- Health
Take a moment to reflect which areas speak to you, and in what way they are important to you. You might want to rate them out of 10 for importance, and again out of 10 for how much they currently feature in your life. If you see a mismatch between the two ratings, this is probably an area to work on by introducing more ways to reconnect with that value. The emphasis here is placed on how connected you feel to a value rather than how many times you perform a particular action. So you might decide you want to improve your health by going to the gym. You might even set yourself a goal of going three times a week – but rather than viewing anything less than this as a failure, instead any visits to the gym are viewed as furthering your connection with your value of health.
Responding to missed goals with self-compassion
It is extremely likely, if not certain, that there will be times that you do not meet your goals, or your connection with important values drifts. It can be very tempting to respond harshly to ourselves in these moments with self-criticisms or feeling like a “failure”. This can create a cycle: I miss my goal → I feel disappointed → I criticise myself → I feel even worse → I’m unmotivated to try again → I miss my goal again and am distanced from my values → I feel disappointed…
So what’s the alternative? It’s perfectly normal to feel disappointed or sad about missing an important goal. The change to make is in how we respond to ourselves afterwards. Rather than responding with self-criticism, how would things be different if you responded with self-compassion? Well, you’ll still feel sad and disappointed about missing your goal – but you won’t feel self-critical or like a failure.
How can you start practising self-compassion? Like any other skill, self-compassion can take time and practice to learn, and can be a part of therapy. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Start noticing the words your mind uses to label you, particularly when you’ve made a mistake. You might be surprised by how critical your mind can be or how often it labels you negatively.
- Consider an alternative response to your inner critic. You might find it helpful to think about how you would respond to a loved one who had made the same mistake, or to use a mantra like “I’m trying my best” or “I’m good enough”.
- If responding to yourself positively feels too difficult at the moment, you can instead respond with neutral self-statements like “I’ve made a mistake, everyone makes mistakes”.
- Remember that the way in which you respond to yourself is just as important as the words you use – think about the tone of voice you use to speak to yourself
- If you’re keen to develop this skill further, there are many self-compassion exercises and meditations you can find online.
Setting goals and managing our successes and failures can be challenging, and a list of tips, whilst hopefully helpful, is not a substitute for therapy. If you’re feeling under a lot of pressure, struggling with self-criticism or just unsure which direction you want to take your life in, therapy could help you. Get in touch with us to see what support we can offer: enquiries@belgraviapsychologypractice.com