If you want to change your life or your lifestyle in 2022, don’t try to change the whole thing at once.
It won’t work.
At all.
I’m not saying you can’t go after or achieve tons of goals—you definitely can, more power to you!
I’m just talking about the mindset you go after these things with.
Instead of following two rabbits and catching neither, as the saying says, first, focus on one thing you can do to help achieve what you most want.
But before you can do that… you may need to decide:
What’s the one thing you most want to go after?
Make it concrete.
So you know exactly what you’re chasing.
What’s one move you can make that will get you closer to it?
It can be a small move—hell, it can be super small.
It can be any move.
It doesn’t really matter what the first move is, as long as you think there’s a good chance you can actually achieve it.
Because once you achieve it, you’ll feel motivated to make another move.
And another.
And another.
And…
This all reminds me of a saying I really like: “Progress not perfection.”
I’ve heard this extrapolated into a couple other sayings as well.
Here are some of my favorites, perhaps one will strike a chord with you more than the others. They’re all true:
Progress is motivating; perfection is demotivating.
Perfection is a prison; progress is liberation.
How does this apply to your New Year’s goals?
Simple. By successfully making small changes one after the other—i.e. Continually achieving small goals—instead of trying to change/achieve everything at once, you have a much more realistic chance of reaching “that thing” you’re after.
In a perfect world this would go without saying (then again, what did I just say about perfection?) but don’t pick an unrealistic resolution that’s most likely to fail.
Examples?
Running in a marathon if you get out of breath walking up one flight of stairs.
Completely quitting smoking in a month.
Getting your own Netflix comedy special if you’ve never even uploaded a YouTube video.
More realistic (actually achievable) goals would be:
- Resolve to walk for 15 minutes (or 30 minutes, or an hour—according to your ability) every day.
- Resolve to cut down the number of cigarettes you smoke by x each month, until you’ve quit entirely.
- Resolve to find an open mic in your area, and go to it.
Whatever you’re spending your time, money, effort, skills and talents on right now… are they bringing you closer to “that thing” you want?
Or are you busy being busy?
Once you know what that thing is you want—and it’s okay if you don’t while you’re reading this—you can start to figure out what moves will get you closer to it.
I might help to think of it like a game board—think of Monopoly (Candyland works too, if you’re into that)
You can’t just jump your thimble from the starting space to those blue properties in one move.
But you can move there in steps.
Even if you roll snake eyes on every single roll.
Even if you’re jumping two spaces at a time.
You’ll eventually make it to that Candy Castle. I mean… Park Place.
Don’t be overwhelmed by your goals.
For now, focus on that one thing.
Look at what you need to do to make it happen.
Break it into small moves.
Make those moves.
Achieve those goals.
One step.
Then another.
Bring that thing closer.
You’ll see it’s a lot easier than you may have thought.
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