Avoid These Goal-Setting Mistakes (aka New Year Resolutions Mistakes)
& exercises that help you plan, follow through and audit the roadmap of your life; Zoom's founder story; Dark side of modelling; Different stages of writing; Now We are Breaking Up; #KittyCounselor
As we are transitioning to the new year soon, I've been reflecting a lot on my goals for 2021.
Wait, hold on, we still have a month left!
Yeah, but December's kinda the slow month. It's a time where we would go on holiday, and reunite with families. My system, usually, and automatically shuts down in December.
So I thought I should reflect on how my New Year Resolutions 2021 have been, so far.
Mistake #1: Plunging into things with no clear roadmap
After countless failures in New Year’s Resolutions over the years, I initially ditched the idea of having them this year. But sometime in February, I thought of my “New Year’s Resolutions”—better late than never right?
And I gotta say, I've plunged, into a lot of things this year. Some I thought through, but that's just it. I thought through it, without a clear roadmap laid down on a piece of paper to keep me in check along the way.
But hey, sometimes, you just gotta start right? Which is also true...
Mistake #2: Not addressing other goals
Until I watched a brilliant, 1hour+ course on Designing Your Dream Life by Tom Kuegler— a writer I look up to—I didn’t know that I had not addressed other goals.
I was most definitely paying extra attention towards goals that scream career-driven or aspect of hobbies. Also, the pandemic played a role in this.
I get it. Most of us, post-college, have our minds so fixated on "getting a job, earning money, etc etc” that we somehow neglect other goals and shut them off at the back of our minds. Personally, not addressing them made me feel (sorta) hollow inside. Like there's something missing in my life.
What really spoke out to me in Tom’s FREE course were how he break down goals into five pillars:
Work Goals
Relationship Goals
Location Goals
House Goals
Hobbies Goals
But being a human being is more than just money & climbing the ladder. We all have desires of different spectrums and are at various Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs stages.
💬 There are other needs like relationship, location, and house that we need to address as goals.
However, the nature of these other goals (aka that house) can feel that it would be impossible to achieve that year.
And here’s what I understand, addressing these other goals does not necessarily mean that we have to act on them that exact year—i.e. buy a house immediately!
Alternatively, addressing them means that we build up the pre-steps to achieving them. It can be a simple understanding of the steps on “How to buy a house in Bali”.
Because if we shut it off completely, we won’t even inch nearer towards making them a reality in the coming New Years’ Resolutions.
Takeaway: Address these other goals, even if you know you won’t be able to achieve them in the particular year, but maybe 3 years down the road.
Mistake #3: Not looking at things from a bird’s eye view
Because some goals take a rather long time compared to the rest, I didn’t consider zooming out from it and seeing the big picture.
These long periods of time have had their way of making me flinch, and doubt every step I took this year. Also because in the back of my head, a voice said I’d figure it out along the way.
I mean, mad props to you if you managed to start something scary. Starting something itself is a huge step. & you may not have the capacity and clarity at the big picture in the initial stages.
However, once you get past that stage, you’ll also need to address the forthcoming roadmaps, and plan them step-by-step so you won’t steer away from the big picture and go into another rabbit hole when you hear a different noise, or feel demotivated.
Takeaway: Having a big picture in mind helps eliminate the feeling of getting overwhelmed along the way, and questioning yourself “am I doing the right thing? or am I going in the right direction?”
It's not too late to plan the roadmap of your life
2022, is a month plus left (which you may think is a lot of time), but a month plus is not that long for you to do some soul-searching, really think about your life goals, and plan that roadmap.
So that when 2022 starts, you're just left with...
Putting things into action, and measuring your mile markers.
— Tom Kuegler
P/s: I’m very discerning about sharing what courses I take but this one by Tom (& have I mentioned it’s FREE?), in a heartbeat is worth your time. It’s great for not just writers, but everyone to go really deep into their calling and goals; together with laying out actions tailored to themselves. I wish I can explain tactically as Tom did, but he does it better than me.
Real self-love is some tough love
… 🐦, I beg to differ because we are not immune to falling back into bad patterns of ditching our goals.
Anyone can plan, but not everyone can follow through with their plan.
To stay on this “simple path”, means we need some tough love = attitude adjustment.
Tough love means doing scheduled audits along the way and reflecting on your weekly goals—also something I am so bad at & trying to improve. It means re-learning how to be organized, how to strategize, how to handle roadblocks without turning into various directions every so often.
I don't know about you, but moving forward into 2022, I really really need to eliminate this struggle of not doing audits on my goals, and wasting time always turning left and right in my roadmap.
Don’t be that person who fails at their New Year’s Resolutions every year until they die. Be that person who takes a chance on him or herself and does what it takes to rewrite their story. — You 2.0, Ayodeji Awosika
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Making videos as an Introvert —I’m thinking of branching into this, any tips?
UN village fan cams. I'll never get tired of them.
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I gotta say, what took the forbidden fruit so long?!
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🎞 Now We Are Breaking Up Ep 2 — aka *still processing my thoughts on this* but finally a k-drama that's exciting!
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+ My obsession with Succession continues. This time, PA Jess is someone I’m intrigued about.
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I became a mediator of four cats fighting—oh dear. Time to add #kittycounselor to my resume. 🥶
Kuching is now officially UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy!
Let me know your thoughts!
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