When what we don’t achieve is just as important
Photo: The Image Takers
Late each December, I revel in sitting down to set goals and intentions for the year ahead.
Aided by fabulous goal-setting stationery, I’m like a pig-in-mud! I love to write about what I would like for my life in the coming weeks, months and years.
However, it’s easy to get caught in the future, and think of all the possible outcomes for myself and those around me. In doing so, I often skip the opportunity to reflect on what I did and didn’t achieve of the goals I set the year before, and why this was the case.
Looking at my list for 2019, some key plans remain unticked. I feel there’s two reasons why.
Firstly, there are goals/intentions that I simply didn’t achieve because I forgot, never got around to, etc. This is an important category to reflect on. I can be honest and say that it wasn’t that I didn’t have time, money or energy, it’s that I chose not to do them. They simply were not important enough for me to follow through on. Disappointing in some circumstances, but not significantly.
Second are the goals/intentions that became irrelevant shortly after I had set them. When setting intentions in December, we have reasonable visibility on January, maybe all the way to March. But often, we can neither see nor imagine the variability of outcomes for our future beyond that.
So, some plans remain proudly unticked because other opportunities presented themselves, and I defiantly stepped in a different direction.
Here, I thought I’d share what I haven’t done, as it may help you see the value in doing it yourself. A reflective exercise can give us the opportunity to understand why our days or months have turned out differently to what we’d anticipated, and can help us be more honest when we plan ahead.
What didn’t I complete?
List our getaway house on AirBnB: I researched this and set up the listing on AirBnb but decided not to rent it out after all. It became important to my husband and I to actually enjoy the place for ourselves for a while, after working so hard to buy it.
Complete the 52 challenges from Sarah Wilson’s book Simplicious Flow: I did three. No points for me here, but on reflection I feel I got close to what I intended by setting this challenge, which was to reduce waste and improve my creativity with cooking. My favourite was taking home napkins from cafes that have been left on the table unused/slightly used. Never need to buy paper towel again!
Draft framework for my ‘book-book’: I warred with this one for a while. I made some early inroads, and was close to committing to having the book written and published in time for Christmas 2019. But ultimately I decided that this was no longer an urgent priority for me and I would revisit it in either 2020, or even later. Different projects with work and creative outlets had presented themselves and I was more drawn to those, than the book-book.
Convert my eBook to audiobook: This went into the too-hard basket. After looking into some Apps to help me do it, I got frustrated by the sound of my own voice and put this down and walked away.
The goal I was afraid to write down
One thing stood out to me in re-reading the notes I had set for myself for 2019 was the fact I didn’t write down that I wanted to have a baby, or at least become healthily pregnant.
It was actually a really important goal for me.
I now see that I didn’t want to write it down, as I felt that achieving it was beyond my control. To put it on paper was putting undue pressure on myself.
It turned out that I did have a baby. But what that meant for my goals/intentions was that a lot of what I’d originally put on paper was pushed aside.
It was a good reminder to be really honest with myself when setting plans, and to not be afraid of considering the potential of different scenarios.
Reflection is incredibly important each year. It can give us an opportunity to think of what we have achieved, what we’re grateful for and what we’ve learnt. It’s a chance to get real with ourselves before setting our next lot of goals.
Now I’m equally proud of what I did, as I am of what I didn't do. And I’m excited about my plans for the year ahead.