Goals is a word we hear a lot. Everyone always wants to know our goals. “What are your goals for the semester” “What are the goals for this class?” “What are your goals for your life?” As a society, we really obsess over our “goals”. And it’s not bad. It’s good to have goals. We all have goals. But do we all achieve them?
The answer for a lot of people is no. Why? Because when we focus only on our goals, we ignore something that is more crucial, more essential, and more important. Your habits. The habits we create are more important than the goals we set. Goals are easy to give up on and they distort our sense of success and failure. However, our habits, they allow us to be consistent, they help us develop personal values, and bring us closer to our goals. This is how you unlock your full potential.
“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.”
Anthony Robbins
Goals are so easy to give up on. Especially because most of us like to make goals that are broad, vague, and occur sometime in the future. There’s no demand for consistency. These goals often end up taking a backseat as we’re making our way through our day to day lives. Instead, we should focus on the things that do affect our day to day lives. Our habits. A study done at Duke University found, “that nearly half of the things we do every day is a repeated behavior” Our daily routines and practices are hard to give up on. They demand us to be consistent.
Once I made a goal to read 12 books in a year, one per month. That goal was broad, vague, and occurred in the future. And it never happened. With all my assignments, I kept putting it off, telling myself that I had time. If I missed this month, I could read two books next month. Instead, I should’ve focused on creating a habit like this: Every night before I go to sleep, I read 1-2 chapters of a book, and on some nights, I get to enjoy my favorite ice cream while doing it. This habit now creates room for consistency which the goal did not.
“Try not to become a man (or person) of success. Rather become a man (or person) of value.”
Albert Einstein
Developing habits that benefit us allows us to focus on our values, who we want to become as a person, rather than how much “success” we need to achieve. Often goals become measuring sticks for success. We use them to assess how successful we are, or going to be. According to Ray Williams, (a coach for multiple Fortune 500 companies) instead, we develop a “system of positive habits” such as “morning routines and meditation” habits that will “that contribute to our well being.
“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters”
Colin Powell
I’m not saying that we should never focus on our goals. But I am asking you to think of it this way: if life is a journey, our goals are the destinations but our habits are how we get there. “We first make our habits, then our habits make us” So remember, creating healthy habits is important because when you’re deciding your habits, you’re deciding on who you want to be.
