“I’m 95 years old. Happy and content sitting on my front porch in my favorite rocking chair staring out into a sea of evergreen trees. The sun is just peeking up over the mountains and the birds are beginning their morning chorus. A dog happily sits by my feet and a dear cat is purring on my lap. I slowly rock and think about my life. What has brought me joy? What has brought me peace? What am I so grateful I put time and attention toward? What regrets linger?”
Happy New Year!
What is your relationship with the New Year and creating goals and resolutions?
Love it?
Overwhelmed by it?
Dislike it?
Never do it?
Set them and then don’t follow through?
Wherever you land with them, I believe I’ve been there. As a recovering perfectionist and overachiever I generally love setting goals. Most years I adore sitting down with a brand new calendar and a blank journal page and thinking about what I want to create for the year ahead.
However, those same tendencies are also my downfall and can create a sense of overwhelm and discouragement.
- I’ve found myself with a list so long, so urgent and important that I can’t decide where to start.
- I’ve set myself up with a rigorous schedule that soon falls by the wayside when living a messy life sneaks back in.
- I’ve felt discouraged that my big goals and plans often don’t leave me with the feeling that I ultimately thought they would.
What I’ve discovered about setting goals is that there are often two missing steps that most of us fail to stop and do before setting our goals.
- The first place to start is to reflect on your values. What is truly, TRULY important to you? If you were in your 90’s reflecting back on your life what would have mattered? Where would you have wanted to spend your time, attention, and resources? This clears out goals that land as “shoulds” and also helps you narrow down your list to the things that might really matter. Then only choose 1-2 goals that fully align with your values and where you want your attention and focus to go. We can get a lot done in a year but if we scatter ourselves in too many directions we can easily lose focus and will accomplish less on the things that matter the most.
- The second place is to uncover any sneaky beliefs that are hiding out underneath a goal. One of my biggest beliefs is that I will become “better” and thus “feel better” by doing a goal. Now this sounds great right? Who doesn’t want to improve and become a better version of themselves? So let’s dig deeper. Underneath my desire to become better is a desire to escape the hardships of life. There is a belief that if I become better I won’t feel as bad about myself or get as angry or frustrated. Maybe people will like me better and I won’t worry about being rejected? See? Sneaky! The truth is that to try to avoid life’s hardships is a fruitless task. Suffering is part of being human. Experiencing challenging emotions is part of it all. Creating, achieving and living our best lives does not exempt us from this. So dig deep underneath your goals and ask this question, “so that I can/will…?” and see what comes up. Ask this at least 4 times for each goal to understand all the thoughts and beliefs (beautiful and challenging) lurking around it.
- I want to meditate regularly…so that I can/will…?
- I want to lost x amount of weight…so that I can/will…?
- I want to be more patient….so that I can/will…?
What I’ve realized through these steps is how much I’ve let goal setting be a barrier to actually loving myself exactly as I am. It obviously doesn’t need to be this way. Creating and achieving goals is a perfect way to learn and gain a lot of joy out of life. But if we do it out of a desire to escape who we are then we are missing the boat in terms of satisfaction and growth.
This quote by Pema Chodron has been a good mantra,
“We can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is…not to try to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”
Whatever your goals are this new year, I hope that along the way they support you in befriending yourself! That is who we are with for the whole of our lives. At the end of our life, I imagine we would like to enjoy the company of the one person who has been with us the entire journey.
Here is to a year of compassionate presence and befriending ourselves just as we are.
❤
Jennifer
“The goal of practice is to become a compassionate mess”
-Rob Nairn