New Year, New Goals

This was week 133 of my Operation Melt journey that started with my goal to escape obesity and lose over 100 pounds in under a year. These weekly blog posts are about continuing to hold myself accountable while sharing my journey with you. My hope is that something that I am doing will inspire you to try to crush your own goal, will motivate you to keep going and will equip you with some additional tools that have helped me manage my journey.

First post of 2020 so you know what that means… time to revise my annual goals.

After the past two years of aggressive personal goals and lots of transformation it is kind of tough to decide how to approach this year. Yes I have a ton of things I would like to accomplish but I don’t really look at those as goals big enough to set for the year. I am thinking that I want to do something a little different.

This year, instead of creating a laundry list of goals that I am chasing, I am going to create a theme for the year. The theme for the year is kind of a goal (though not a SMART goal) but it is bigger than that. My 2020 theme is a lens through which other goals, behaviors and decisions can be made.

I am still working to perfect it but, for now, my 2020 theme will be: start focusing on being more content with where I am, stop worrying about fixing what’s broken but continue trying to improve myself daily.

I know it is a mouthful but it is something meaningful to me. I want to spend 2020 working on enjoying what I have accomplished over the past couple of years of transformation. This is contrary to always being focused on fixing some problem with myself that exists only in my mind. But I also have things I want to accomplish and don’t want to be complacent so I want to continue working to improve myself. This improvement is less corrective and more of a “good to great” approach of getting to the next level.

My 2020 theme is also a great reflection of the balance that I want to always strive to maintain in my new healthy life.

Some initial examples of how I want to translate this theme into behaviors include:

I am going to stop weighing myself daily and switch to 2-3 times per week.
I am going to continue running races and working to improve my running but will not set a specific goal about how many races I want to run or specifically how much I want to improve my time.
I am going to focus on being more deliberate about my posture.
I am going to work to be more deliberate about recovery time.
I am still going to track my food but won’t get upset if I go a little over my calorie target within a single day, it is the week that matters to me.
I will work on updating the design of my website and my social media posts.
I will complete a first draft of my second book while continuing to get the work out about my first book.
Through all of this I am going to continue looking for opportunities to add value to others.

The list goes on but all of the behaviors or intentions for 2020 all connect back to my theme. By focusing my 2020 energy on this theme I can make this the greatest year ever!

Just to be clear… don’t call it a resolution!

Thanks so much for reading. I hope that my experiences and my tips can help you achieve your own big goals. If we work together we can build a world where goals never die of loneliness!