Goal Reboot: How To Re-Evaluate and Reset

Each New Years, we’re inundated by advice on setting resolutions and goals. Every year, there’s this big *push* on getting off to a running start, with tips on creating momentum, setting achievable targets, and positive thinking. It’s a heady time, with millions of people freshly focused on shiny new goals, all dangling seemingly just within reach.

But what do you do when life gets in the way, and momentum falls apart?

Maybe your goal of paying off debt took a back seat to the emergency water pump replacement in your car. Maybe your target of a 40 hour work week was derailed when aliens abducted your boss, meaning a temporary promotion. experience a bit.Maybe your best intentions of blogging more regularly failed you because your Aunt Gertrude needed extra help on her Poodle Farm, or maybe your inspiration and willpower just didn’t show up for work this week.

Even the best plotted resolutions and goals get derailed.

Circumstances change, your understanding of what is and isn’t realistic can change, sometimes even the motivations behind your resolutions change. Your goals need to shift and change, too, allowing for the new circumstances. Think of the month of January as a period of beta-testing your resolutions, where the whole point is to expose the problems and glitches, then find ways to fix them.

So once you’ve stumbled (or fallen flat on your face) in your resolutions, step back.

Re-evaluate.

Do you still care about the goal, is it still applicable, and do you still *want* to reach it? If you’ve lost all motivation, chuck it. Find something new to spend your time on, rather than sitting there, not caring, and yet feeling like a failure.

Is your goal still realistically achievable? If not, change it. Adapt it. Lower the bar. Success comes in travel as well as economy sizes.

Consider keeping the general goal, but changing your method of reaching it. If your goal was to reduce debt, but emergency purchases increased your credit card bills, don’t stop reducing your debt. Change tactics to reducing your interest rates, or increasing savings so the next emergency doesn’t have to go on the cards.

What caused you to stumble? Identify the problems, and find a solution or work around. If cravings for sweets caused your diet to derail, find a small sweet that won’t add many calories, but will satisfy the craving. If you had trouble working that daily meditation into your schedule, set a standard appointment for it, and set your watch to remind you. Did a missed workout cause you to stop working out entirely? Allow for X number of missed appointments.

Once you’ve decided to keep to your goal or resolution, and made any needed adjustments, reboot the whole thing. Give yourself a fresh start, without any of the left over guilt or blame from your first run at the target.

Repeat this process as many times as needed. Too often, we blame failed resolutions on our will power, when it may actually be a failure of the goal-structure.

So if you’ve stumbled on your resolutions this year, re-evaluate and reboot. In this case, do-overs are not only acceptable, but expected.

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MINDTWEAK: After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breath and reboot. - Sarah Jessica Parker

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