New Year, New Goals, Same Mission
Welcome 2023! Another new year is here and I don’t know about you, I’m excited for what’s to come. About this time every year leaders everywhere are having the “what are our goals” conversations, and rightfully so. At the church I work for we function on a ministry or fiscal calendar so the goal setting we do is usually during July and August but for me personally and for us as a family we sat down and did this over this past weekend. We talked through the goals each of us had for ourselves and then my wife and I gave a couple goals to each of our children. Truthfully, it wasn’t very different than an organization or ministry setting their goals. This got me thinking about a few things I believe we all need reminders on in these seasons that I’d like to share.
Mission First
Goals are great and I’d argue important but do those goals point back to the mission for your organization or family? (Side note, most organizations have mission statements but many families don’t. I’d encourage you to have this for you personally and for your family.) I love the way Andy Stanley says it in his book, “Visioneering.” He says, “visions are refined, they don’t change. Plans are revised, they rarely stay the same.” This is why it’s so important to have mission and vision statements so that you can have something for your goals to point to. Do your goals support your mission? If not, I’d encourage you to revisit your goals.
STEPPING OUT
Once our goals are set we need to put practical steps in place to help us achieve those goals. What we did as a family when we did our goals is talk about each person’s responsibility for each goal but also what the rest of the family needed to do to support and help make those goals a reality. We talked through practical steps to help us achieve our goals. I think our method is one that applies across the board in goal setting. From there we’ve had some follow up conversations on what we’re doing to move towards our goals and what practical steps we’ve put in place to move that direction. It’s not enough to set goals if we don’t set ourselves up to achieve them.
CELEBRATE
It’s so important to celebrate wins, big and small, while on the journey. Obviously if you set a goal to lose twenty pounds, you’d throw a party when you got there. We need to celebrate our and others successes and most would agree with that but I think where we struggle is celebrating the small victories. Those are so important to keep us going. Again, if your goal is to lose twenty pounds you may feel some discouragement to step on the scale and realize you’ve only lost ten pounds. I understand that in that moment you haven’t reached your ultimate goal but you should celebrate that you’ve made significant progress towards your goal. I think this idea is true in so many settings and we need to celebrate more.
What have I missed? What do you focus on when goal setting? It’s so important for us to set goals and set ourselves to succeed! Stay the course, you have what it takes!