Knowing Is Half the Battle! Strategies for Investing in Your Goals
We all have goals. How we go about achieving them is where things get more personalized. Some people are self-motivated and want to see goals they set for themselves through. They thrive on the feeling of achieving them. Others find it difficult to stay focused because that pesky little thing called life gets in the way.
Why can goals be so hard to see all the way through? The answer depends on the person you're asking. But there are five main reasons why people don't achieve their goals.
Fear of failure/success.
Lack of commitment.
Easily distracted.
Failing to plan.
Having too many goals.
Do you fall into one of these categories? If so, you’re not alone.
So what do you do to change? Where do you begin? You start small. Dr. Robert Maurer, author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way states that when it comes to goal-setting, it’s all about visualization and confidence.
When setting goals, it’s important to know thyself! Don’t set yourself up for failure by overcommitting in a short amount of time. Before you invest your time, energy, and potentially money into a goal, plan it out first.
Also, take stock of what changes will be easier for you to make and make those first. For the more challenging, take a deep breath, and figure out the smallest step you can make in the right direction (it can even be laughably small) and then do that next.
How to properly invest your time in a goal.
Dr. Maurer writes in his book that little shifts are key to achieving your goals. Planning ahead makes any goal more attainable. It’s also important to take your daily schedule into consideration. Investing in your goals takes dedication and time.
Half the battle is putting together a plan that will see your goals to fruition. You start small. You take that goal you have in mind and you break it down into as many steps as you need to in order to achieve it.
These steps can take weeks or even months. Don’t be discouraged by the length of time. No one accomplishes their goals overnight. Most goals are large projects that require a great deal of time to work toward.
For example, deciding to declutter and organize your home are large goals. You won’t finish them in a single day. First, they’re massive undertakings and will take a lot of concentration and time. Second, depending on your personal tastes and vision, it won’t matter how much inspiration you draw from social media. You need time to figure out what works for you.
Let’s say, for instance, that your goal is to live a more minimalist lifestyle.
Spending more time in our homes during the pandemic has allowed us to see the flaws and highlights. For most people, it revealed just how much stuff they owned. Purging and decluttering were never more prominent than during COVID.
Some have decided they want to explore becoming a minimalist. The minimalist lifestyle is not about owning less for the sake of less. It’s about owning with intention. You declutter what doesn’t serve you anymore. Why let something sit and collect dust when it can find a new home elsewhere?
The first step to achieving a minimalist lifestyle is decluttering. Sorting and edit through every drawer, shelf, bin, and closet! But you can start small and just do one drawer at a time to avoid overwhelming yourself.
Be sure to go at your own pace.
Decluttering possessions you’ve had for years will be hard. But the further you get in your journey, the easier it’ll be to determine what brings value to your life and what doesn’t.
If you're not sure if minimalism is right for you, check out the Netflix documentary, Less is Now. You can also visit The Minimalists, the subjects of the documentary. They offer a lot of insight into how you can begin your minimalist journey. A great exercise to try is the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge, created by The Minimalists.
The challenge goes like this:
On day one you declutter one item.
On day two you declutter two items.
On day three you declutter three items.
And so on until you’ve completed the 30 days. By the end, you’ll have decluttered over 500 items from your home!
Perhaps being a minimalist isn’t a desire. Maybe you’d just like to live a more organized life. Being able to find what you need when you need it would be a dream come true. Living a more organized life involves creating systems for an orderly and functional home.
The first step to living an organized life is to define the function of a space before you declutter and sort through your belongings. Find what doesn’t suit your needs anymore or doesn’t support that assigned function.
Once you’ve gotten down to what you really need to function in your space, it’s now time to apply the one-in, one-out rule. If you bring something new into the home, you must take something out. By following this rule, your goal of living more organized will be that much easier to achieve.
We look at Pinterest and Instagram and often want the picture-perfect organization. Neatly labeled rows of clear bins of cereal and rice. But does your lifestyle and speed of life dictate you spending time to decant groceries into cute and clear containers for a more uniform pantry?
Maintenance is key to whatever system you’ve decided to land on. Organize and tidy for five to ten minutes a day. Put things back where they belong and be vigilant in maintaining the systems you put in place. This might require a weekly tidy or a monthly evaluation.
When goals are achieved it doesn’t mean they’re done. Depending on the goal, you may need to do some following up. And for goals like healthy eating, you’ll need to be dedicated each week.
Will you have bad days or even bad weeks, where it’s difficult or impossible to maintain the systems and routines you’ve started? Of course!. But that doesn’t mean your goal is out of reach or that you have failed. It simply means you need to work a little bit harder to achieve it.
Don’t quit after one bad day.
Recalibrate and recommit, think about how far you’ve come, and stay the course. You’ll never build the confidence you need to work toward and complete your goals if you quit too easily.
Investing in yourself and your goals is one of the best investments you can make. We can all do with a little personal development. If you’re ready to take your goal-setting and goal-achieving to the next level, we can work with you to set up a manageable system. We also offer monthly maintenance packages to help you keep the systems in place!
Wherever you are in your goal journey, take baby steps. Accomplish one thing a day that brings you closer to completing that goal. You can do this!
And for those goal-seekers looking to live a more organized life, be sure to follow Dexterous Organizing on social media. We offer daily inspiration, tips, and tricks to make your home as functional as possible.
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