Creating Wellness Goals Worth Striving For
Getting through your days without goals in mind is a lot like having a bow and arrow without a target. What would be the point of that?
We need a strong reason for getting out of bed and starting our day. Maybe you haven't really found that yet or you've lost that impetus; if you're sailing on the boat of uncertainty you're definitely not alone.
Reverse engineering can be a powerful strategy to use when we're lacking direction in life. We think of a specific destination and then create a detailed roadmap for how to get there. There's nothing to lose from making multifaceted wellness a goal to reverse engineer.
The Wellness Wheel and Your Ideal Self
As a species we're incredibly resilient. We're able to rebuild nations after world wars and create cures for diseases. We can accomplish greater things when our engines of wellness are properly maintained so that we don't fall into crippling job burnout.
Optimal living can be obtained by considering the 7 elements of wellness: emotional, intellectual, physical, social, environmental, financial and spiritual.
To make things easier when envisioning what we want our lives to look like, we can focus on the elements of wellness that stand out the most as we go about our daily living.
Take a moment to picture your ideal self in the following areas:
Personal: What hobbies do you want to explore? What aspects of your personality do you wish to improve? What do you think of when it comes to you having good health?
Professional: What skills do you want to have? What's your preferred income? What's your dream job?
Social: Who do you want to have as friends? What importance do you want to give to family? Who do you want as your life partner?
Effective Goal-Setting
When life gives us a wake-up call we tend to be kind of quick to answer what we want to accomplish. You may want to lose 10 pounds, go back to school to earn another degree or start a family one day. However, we know whether our wellness goals are worth striving for after reflecting considerably on why we want to accomplish them.
I did an undergraduate thesis in my last year of college and I was told this wasn't for the faint of heart. I figured out why I wanted to do it by reflecting on how it'd transform me intellectually and how it could expand the minds of those I explained it to.
"People lose their way when they lose their why."
-Gail Hyatt
If you're a personal development enthusiast like me, then you've probably heard of the acronym S.M.A.R.T. for goal-setting, which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound.
The S.M.A.R.T. guidelines were inspired by the theoretical framework on achievement developed by motivation researchers Locke and Latham.
According to Locke and Latham, there are 5 criteria for goal achievement:
Commitment to going after what you want even in the face of obstacles.
Clarity about what exactly you need to do to get to where you want to be.
Challenge at a level that produces engagement rather than indifference or anxiety.