As you may know if you read my last monthly recap, Joe and I came home from our stay in Florida. When we moved out of the city in June we planned to spend time visiting family in New Jersey, stay in Florida for a little bit at my grandmother’s place (she’s a snowbird and kindly offered for us to have the place to ourselves), and then come back to New Jersey for the holiday season before moving back into the city. I was all in on the plan to stay out of the city until Thanksgiving and enjoy having a bigger space and not paying rent for a while.
I wish I could say that we arrived at the decision simply. Something like: we don’t want to spend more time in Florida right now so we won’t – let’s go back. In reality I was embarrassed that I didn’t want to stick to the original plan and felt like I *should* be able to make it for longer. Instead of acknowledging that we are city people through and through, I found myself feeling like I should keep to the schedule and wait it out. Why?
Part of it was because I cared how it would look to other people (side note: I know that no one really cares all that much what we are up to. As the wise Alexis from Schitt’s Creek says “Trust me, people aren’t thinking about you the way that you’re thinking about you”). And the other part of it is that I love setting goals for myself and am not all that great at changing those goals as circumstances change.
I don’t want to spend too much time on the first one today because I don’t have anything new to say on that topic, and Alexis said it best. I do want to talk about the importance of being willing to change your goals and how it can make a huge impact on your happiness and motivation.
Why do we like to stick to plans?
And why do we use time periods like a year to measure ourselves (looking at you new year’s resolutions)? I think it goes back to how we were conditioned in school. There were very clear objectives to get high grades, very clear timelines that mattered, and transparency around who was doing “well” and who was not. This structure is often used in our personal and professional lives because this is what we grew up knowing. And I think it’s a great structure! I am in sales after all, and we have very clear quota objectives for the year.
However, in a lot of areas of our lives this just doesn’t make sense. There are so many factors that can impact our goals that morph and change over time. How can we expect to set a goal with some information, and then when we get new information not change it?
When should we change our goals?
Early and often. Just kidding, but I do think we should reevaluate our goals early and often. Having regular checkins (whether that’s monthly for longer term goals, or weekly for shorter term goals) can help you dedicate time to ask yourself:
- is this still something that is important to me?
- are there new things I’ve learned that make me want to change this goal or adjust the timeline?
- how can I use what I am learning to better prioritize how I spend my time?
What is the value in changing our plans?
I felt relieved when I finally said to Joe “I’m ready to go back.” Not so much because I expected him to react any other way than “ok, sounds good,” but because I found that saying it out loud didn’t result in me feeling embarrassed or disappointed that I had changed my mind. I had a plan, I had a great time in Florida and realized that a few months was all I needed, and then we changed the plan. It was definitely a bigger deal in my head than in reality and it made me realize that I don’t always have to have everything 100% mapped out in life. Things will change and the better I can change with them the happier I’ll be!
The same can be said for any goals that you are going after. Blindly pursuing a goal just because you once said you would will result in dissatisfaction when you could be spending your time doing something that is aligned with what you want to do now! I’m not suggesting that you change willy nilly, but I am saying that there is nothing wrong with making thoughtful adjustments.
What do you think about changing your goals? Have you ever struggling with changing something you originally said you would do?
Leave a Reply