Everyone is familiar with the inevitable cycle of writing a “New Year’s Resolutions” list in the beginning of January, only to fall short of maintaining these goals by mid-February (or not following through with them at all). You had good intentions, of course, but just can’t ever seem to turn those intentions into long-term habits. Your goal setting doesn’t have to lose hope yet though. There’s a method to finally fulfilling your “new year’s” aspirations, and it begins with today.
“Stop waiting for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you, for life. Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you are in now.” – Unknown
Call it corny, but this quote has genuinely resonated with me and caused me to realize how important it is to quit the bad habit of waiting for the “right time” to make a change. Think about how often you say, “I’ll get back on my sleep schedule at the start of next week,” or “Next month I’ll start that gym membership,” or even “I’ll get a good start on my homework next semester.” The problem with this is that when it’s Wednesday night and you’re up late again, you tell yourself next week you’ll get back on a good schedule, so you go ahead and let yourself off the hook until then. You make an excuse for yourself today because you promised yourself you’ll do it as soon as the new week starts. Then when Monday rolls around and you’re still not on top of it, you do it all over again. Nothing gets accomplished by procrastinating your start date. This is the power of today.
Now that I hopefully have you self-reflecting, let’s talk about the action plan. Setting goals for yourself is a very healthy and beneficial practice. Think about the areas of your life that you want to see improvements in. Academics, relationships, self-care, emotional health and physical health are some major areas to look into. Don’t stop there though. Telling yourself “I want to be healthier” or “I want to do better in school” is not going to put you on a path towards success. Dig deeper, write down specific, obtainable actions that you can do to achieve an overall goal of “better health” or “taking better care of yourself.” Go to the gym at least twice a week, then build up to more often, write in a journal for 10 minutes everyday, start tracking your steps and hit 10,000 everyday, schedule times in your day to not be on your phone; these are specific, measurable goals that you can set for yourself and check off if you did them or not. If you want to get better grades, write down specific changes that you should make to actually achieve this, like setting mental due dates 24 hours before the actual due date so that you never actually wait until the last minute, or set ratios to screen time and study time (every 30 minutes of TV/phone = two hours of studying). Think critically on what will be most productive for you.
Here’s the deal, December is your free-trial month. I would like to personally encourage each of you to spend a decent amount of time allowing yourself to self-reflect and write a list of goals for yourself. It’s not cheesy or overrated, it’s a vital component to self-growth, which we should all work towards every day. If you make the intention to start taking your goals seriously (as you should), you can also begin the habit of not making excuses for why you haven’t started them yet. You took some time to read this, so go ahead and take a minute to start jotting down ideas. You now have, starting TODAY and the rest of the month, enough time to get a head start on your goals. Allow yourself to mess up and forget, no one’s perfect. If you start now, however, it can already become a habit by the time January first rolls around. Remember, even if you hit a funk and trail off from your goals for a while, it’s never too late to start back up. Get that idea out of your head. You don’t have to wait for Monday, for the next semester or especially for the next year to try again. Make today count.