Goal Setting on a New Year

Are you someone who was planning to write your goals before 2024 yet failed to do so? Guess what, you’re not alone.

I (and a few friends too) have failed to set new goals before the new year entered. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past years, it’s that we don’t have to wait for a new year to set goals and start working on them. Although I admit, I can’t deny how does feel good to have goals set as the new year entered.

If you’re still planning how you’d go about this new year, or just someone who’s new to this “goal setting” or “faith goal” thing, here are some tips for you.

Pray to God about Your Year

I’ve been recently encountering this reminder and it does hit hard. If you want to set goals, you need to learn why you want to set these after all.

Prayer aligns us to what God desires for us. This is your BIG WHY. Man plans his steps but it is His plans that succeeds.

Pray to God for His will in your life this new year. You can ask Him to place His desires and make it your desires. Have that sincere heart for it.

Determine How to Set Goals

Once you’ve prayed for His leading and His desires for your life, write down your faith goals by answering this question: “what are you believing for God to do in your life this year?”

But before you write it all down, you need to learn how to do it. Simply writing all will make you feel overwhelmed and even frustrated at some point as the year progress.

For this blog, I’ll be sharing two ways to write your goals:

Top three goals
7 types of goals

For the past years I’ve written three goals. I like to keep things simple and sometimes I make these faith goals (seemingly impossible but trusting God for it).

I learned the second type of goal setting from a friend and she’s been doing it for years. Ramsay Solutions also shared these too and it does make a more sense and more intentional in helping oneself improve. Why?

The 7 types of goals focuses on seven areas of life. These are:

Spiritual goal (example: read the whole Bible this year)
Financial goal (example: invest on mutual funds)
Career goal (example: pursue a career as an artist)
Intellectual goal (example: learn a new language)
Health/Wellness goal (example: have a fitter body)
Family goal (example: have a lunch or dinner family time during the weekends)
Social goal (example: reconnect with college friends)

It makes more sense to create one goal for each to be honest. Of course you can write more. However, if you’re like me, better focus on one for each area.

Determine What Goals to Write

Let me share something I’ve learned last year: understand where you are in your mission, then plot your new year’s vision.

In a way, this can be one way of writing your goal –that is if you’re only focusing on one — however, this concept teaches us to reflect on how we are and how we’ve been last year, and what we should grow better next year.

This concept was actually taught during our training for Performance Management System. Although it applies to improving and strategizing for an organization’s growth, in my end, I saw how it can be applied to one’s improvement.

How do we apply it on ourselves?

List what you wanted to achieve last year.
List down what happened to you last year (both the good and the bad but), especially those connected to what you wanted to achieve.
Reflect on what you listed.
Set a new vision based on what your reflection.
List down your goals that can help you achieve this new vision.

In case you need more direction how to do your reflection, you can use the following prompts:

Have you achieved your goal for last year?
If you haven’t completely achieved it, how many percentage do you think you’ve achieved?
What challenges did you face?
What areas have you improved on?
What areas in your life do you need to improve?
What are your learnings from last year?
What is that one thing you can do differently this year that could improve your changes?
What are the things you need to do to help you achieve it?
Is it still your vision for this year?
What are the changes you need to make this year?
What is God impressing to you on how to go about this?

You can add more questions as you go. I suggest you write it all in a journal.

Make Smart Goals

Let’s admit, what makes goals fail (meaning you haven’t achieved it completely) is because it’s not SMART enough.

SMART stands for:

Specific (example: Read 10 management books next year)
Measurable (example: Read 1 management book every month)
Attainable (example: I have 5 books in management I can start reading while I purchase the next 5 during the first quarter)
Relevant (example: I’m currently managing a team)
Time Bounded (example: I’ll ready one book every month and all 10 by November)

Planning SMART helps plan your course better and make adjustments where needed to make sure you still attain your goal. It’s that simple.

Prepare a Tracker

Yes! Track your progress!

I realized if I want to make sure I am able to meet my personal goals, I might as well create KPIs for myself and review my progress monthly. This means I need to plan my milestones.

There are several ways for you to keep track of your progress. One of them is a calendar.

identify the steps you need to take to reach your goal
set deadlines or appointments for each step
evaluate your progress monthly
have an accountability partner (yup, I have mine for the past years)

Getting an accountability is a case to case basis. However, having one is really a bit help. For the past few years, I’ve focused on spiritual, career, and finance (I do my best with family). I was even coached by some of them. This year, I guess I need someone to help me with my health (other than a doctor).

Working with God

In all of what you do, make sure to include God. I have read, heard, and encountered verses in the Bible that spoke of these. Experiencing it makes the journey worth it.

Once you’ve written and reflected on your goal, pray for it. Offer it to God. Wisdom is sooo available for those who ask for it. This way you’ll know if it happens it’s God, if it didn’t and something better came along, you know it’s still God.

Rest on the truth that He knows what’s best and you’ll be blessed richly. Just draw closer to Him and obey Him. It’s easier said than done but know that all that we have is from Him — you should be confident in that alone.

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.
Proverbs 16:9 NLT