Whether it’s the beginning of a new year, a new semester, or a new season (maybe even a full moon) many people set new goals for themselves. Especially for college students, we tend to set a plethora of goals for ourselves that can be overwhelming and simply just too much to carry. Don’t get me wrong, setting a goal for yourself is amazing; it’s a way to push to be a better version of yourself, stop procrastinating, and pick up healthy habits. However, in my experience I have tried setting far too many goals for myself and when I see that I haven’t kept up with them, I feel like an absolute failure. Setting goals doesn’t have to be so intensive, and if you’re happy with how a lot of current things are in your life, there’s no need for it to change or be better.
In the beginning of the year I wrote down a long list of nitty gritty goals for myself because I was feeling ambitious. These included things like doing more yoga, running, listening to podcasts, not getting below a B on any assignment, journaling every day, wearing cute outfits to class, etc. A month into the semester I was already feeling behind on so many of these goals. I felt so disappointed that I couldn’t meet them to my expectations. In short, I basically self sabotaged myself by packing in so many little goals to follow. I quickly realized that as a college student, I am busy and sometimes I don’t have time for a yoga flow, or I want to dress bummy for class because I’m tired. Little goals like this can be difficult to follow when you’re already trying to focus on other things like work, school, and relationships.
Now, the goals that I set for myself turned into something much lighter and better. They changed into goals for fun and when I am feeling good enough to do them. None of the goals were super intense or extremely important, but changing my way of thinking about goals turned out to be freeing. This way, I don’t feel like a failure if I can’t keep up with something I set myself out to do when I was feeling overly ambitious. This saved me from overwhelm and disappointment.
If you ever find yourself overwhelmed by the goals you set for yourself, just take a step back. Firstly, the world is not going to end because you didn’t meet your goal of going to the gym 5 days a week. We are busy people and sometimes life gets in the way. The best part is, you can make any goal work by implementing it into your life whenever you can (without being so strict on yourself).
In your goal setting, don’t be too hard on yourself. You deserve grace and to not be overexerted! Goals can be completed at any time, it’s rarely ever too late.