Are you satisfied with the way things are going in your life or is it time to change one or more of your goals?
Achieving the goals you’ve set brings considerable happiness and contentment. But, what if you’ve taken a different path and you think it would be helpful to change your goals?
Sometimes, life requires that we alter the direction we’re headed or abandon it altogether. Something happens and your focus changes, demanding that you relook at the goals you established.
Whatever the case, choosing whether or not to change your goals may be in order.
5 Things You Can Do When It’s Time to Change a Goal
1. Review and adjust your current life list
Pull out the list of goals you set years ago. Do you still want these goals?
Maybe you’re ready to let a few of them go to make room for some new ones that are more fitting. Give yourself permission to adjust your list as needed.
For example, maybe you expected to own a large-scale business with 50+ employees by the time you’re 45 years old. Age 45 has come and gone and your business is still more of a single-person endeavour with a few freelancers helping out here and there.
You love what you do and no longer think you’d want to manage a large number of employees. It’s okay to remove the goal of having 50+ employees and scale down to something that feels more in line with what you want today.
2. Identify what you want out of life
It’s always a good idea to write your goals down and have them in a notebook or in a file where you can easily access them. This will help you make changes and updates easily when you need to.
Even if you’re not yet sure about your overall goals, jot down the experiences you want to have and place them in your goals file. You can also use your journal for this exercise.
Don’t limit yourself. Dream big and create a list of everything you want to be, do or have. Also, go back to your previous list and pick the goals you want to continue with and leave out the ones you want to change or abandon.
It doesn’t mean that you’ll achieve all the goals in your new list. But simply writing them down and looking through the list frequently will keep you moving towards these goals.
3. Verbalize any changes you’re considering
If you have a supportive partner, inform them of the type of life you want to create since your lives and goals are intertwined.
When you change a goal, especially the major ones, this may also impact your relationship. So it’s important to let them know about the changes you plan to make.
Verbalizing what you want also helps you conceptualize your goals and generate support from your loved ones.
4. Infuse elements of your goals into your day
When you include your goals in your daily life, the goals stop being some lofty ideas you rarely think about. This also helps you connect strongly to actions that will lead you to the achievement of your goal(s).
For example, say after making changes, you now have a life goal to visit a certain country:
- Set up a folder on your computer or Google Drive. Create a file in this folder where you can copy and paste links to websites and information about the places you want to visit. You can also set up a physical file to keep magazine articles and photographs.
- Read a travel article each day and use the information to update your folder.
- Spend some time each week looking things up online or browsing through magazines to pick more info for your virtual and physical folders.
- Open a savings account and start depositing money there each month. Check your bank account weekly to ensure your travel funds are building up.
There’s a lot you can do to keep your new or updated goal at the top of your mind. This may actually be the step that was missing previously which led to you having to change a goal or abandon it.
5. Try setting and achieving mini-goals
Sometimes you may be curious about a particular goal but you’re unsure whether you want to change your life’s direction in order to achieve it. In this case, it would help to set up a mini-goal to start exploring this area.
Working on the mini-goal gives you:
- An opportunity to feel things out and figure out whether changing your goal or taking on a new goal will work for you.
- Time to figure out whether you want to go further with this new venture.
- Space to identify whether you’ve been on the right track with prior goals you set – in which case there is no need to change them.
Establishing small targets that will lead you to accomplish your main goals is smart and effective. The mini-goal will also save you time, energy, and money.
Do you need to change a goal?
Life happens and things change. You may have to alter the life plan and goals you had previously set for yourself. Try one or all of these 5 strategies when you need to change a goal or if you need to remove one and add a new one.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
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