Writing goals down is the tried and true backbone of all the self-development advocates of our day. From Tony Robbins to your corporate HR team’s personalized S.M.A.R.T plan, starting any method of personal change begins with putting an intention into writing. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? So how do we go from our best idea of what we want to actually making it our reality?
Writing goals down is the first and most important step in achieving your dreams. It’s a proclamation to yourself that you mean business about what you want in life. The first outward sign that you’re aiming to achieve something, writing a goal is like the starting gun of a race: you either go or stand still and miss the entire thing (meanwhile living with that sinking feeling that you didn’t do what you said you would).
But this ritual is often just that: something we do in the beginning that feels satisfying, like we’re really gonna do it this year, but ultimately winds up being just another wad of paper in our trash heap of shoulda, coulda, woulda’s. What creates actualizing our dreams is literally becoming that which we want to be. We have to shift our identity. Let’s take a deep dive into it, with first giving credit where credit is due: the proof that writing goals does have power.
The Power of Writing Goals Down
Writing down goals can help you clarify your thoughts, set your priorities, and track your progress. Studies have shown that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them than those who don’t. This may be because writing down your goals helps you to make a plan for achieving them, and it also helps you to stay motivated and focused on what you want to accomplish. Additionally, writing down your goals can help you to stay accountable to yourself and to others, which can increase your chances of success.
There are several reasons why writing down goals can be important:
- Clarity: It helps you clarify your thoughts and understand exactly what you want to achieve. This can be especially helpful if you have a lot of ideas or if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
- Prioritization: It helps you prioritize your tasks and decide which ones are most important to you. This can help you make better use of your time and energy.
- Tracking progress: You track your progress and see how far you’ve come. This can be a great source of motivation and can help you stay on track.
- Accountability: Helps you stay accountable to yourself and to others. This can be especially helpful if you share your goals with someone else or if you’re working towards a goal with a group of people.
Next, let’s figure out what identity is and why it’s so important to becoming who you dream of.
Why Shifting Your Identity Matters
Identity is the accumulation of characteristics that make up your sense of self. It is the thoughts, daily habits, long-term character traits, and physicality of you that exists in time. It’s what you expect to be on a day to day basis: your memories and emotions, your base-point of personality, your ideas about the life you lead. We learn to have our identity as a child by our interactions with the world around us: learning what’s ok and not, what’s normal in our environments.
Sometimes that identity-shaping forms us into exactly who we feel proud to be. Other times, we grow up with a sense that we want to change, that we’d be more fulfilled with traits we seem to lack. This latter feeling drives us to set goals for changing fundamental habits of being. And while some facets of our identity are hard to change, such as traits we’re born with, we can effect who we are by shifting our beliefs about ourselves in a long term way. It takes concerted effort but is absolutely doable.
Identity involves a sense of continuity, or the feeling that one is the same person today that one was yesterday or last year
American psychological association
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Creating Habits for a New You
A core principal of actualizing goals is to specify exactly what your goal is so that you can set a plan of action and timeline for achieving it. This is a key in the S.M.A.R.T strategy method: The “S” and “M” stands for Specific and Measurable. Of course this makes sense. Vague notions just won’t bring home the bacon. You can act out, or fake it till you make it, a habit (like working out) as much as you want but if you ultimately don’t believe you are the type of person to work out, the habit is likely to fall to the wayside.
If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.
dave ramsey
We have to do this work of writing our aims for change. This is known as outcome-based goal setting. It’s crucial for being able to see where exactly you want to go and to track your progress. However, as James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says, “To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits.” You do this, he teaches, by creating “small wins” that slowly stack proof to yourself that you ARE that person who, say, is a writer or is in shape.
Then, you start to not just do that new habit. You become the type of person who does that thing. It’s a shift in thinking. For example, in my case, I want to be a writer for a living. I can set a goal to create 100 blog posts in a year. And that’s important so as to track progress and actually do the work. But as I go along, I wake up every day to write for an hour. I start to really believe that I am a writer because my habit of writing makes me that. I validate my new identity and that sinks into who I believe myself to be. That’s powerful. Doing the habits over time creates the identity shift.
Making the New You Stick
Writing down your goals in a manner such as the S.M.A.R.T method is a great starting place for becoming the person you dream of. Once you get clear on that, make lists of small, daily habits that reflect those goals. Don’t reach for the stars right away. Just stick to a small progression of daily habits that gets more and more developed over time. In this way, you set yourself up for success.
By winning at small tasks every day, you build self esteem around your new habits and this will take you to your long-term goal. Reward your wins and say things to yourself like, “I am the type of person who writes every day.” Or, “I am the type of person who eats healthy on a regular basis.” Then, you will identify as that which you want to become and eventually, you’ll be that. You can do it!