There’s a lot of talk these days about goals. We talk about setting goals. We talk about breaking our goals down into bite-sized chunks. We talk about obstacles to our goals. We talk about reorienting our time to reflect our goals. We even talk about using planners or journals to make an attempt at organizing our goals.
But sometimes I wonder if many of us have skipped a step. What if we’ve embraced goals that aren’t good goals for us? What if we’ve accepted a certain goal for our lives because we think we should… not because it really fits for our specific stage of life or our personal values? Or, what if our goal is indeed a good goal but in the daily grind of life, we’ve forgotten why we set it?
Today, I want to challenge you to take a second look at your goals for 2017. And I want you to ask this simple question of each goal you’ve set: Why does this particular goal matter to me at this time in my life?
This question is important because it’s one of motivation not execution. It forces us to look back at the rationale behind our goals. To dig down to the root-cause of our intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. That’s not always easy.
To get to this heart of your motivations, it can be helpful to remember the feelings and experiences that brought you to this decision point. As you examine it further, you may be surprised to find that sometimes things have shifted. Or that you’ve gotten sidetracked from your initial inspiration. Or, it might confirm that you’re on the right track and just reinvigorate you.
When you clearly know the reasons why you want to reach a goal, it helps you stir up the energy you need to keep at it. If you can’t figure out more than a reason or two why you want to achieve a goal, it might be helpful to set it aside and spend some time thinking about the whys you can’t answer.
Ultimately asking the “why” question helps re-energize you and can eliminate stagnation. If your “why” is constantly in front of you, it will help you make the decisions in the day-to-day. This is where your motivation circles back to impact your execution.
So, let me ask you, do you know your “why”?
