In the past several months of this rendition of The Happiness Project, I’ve been deriving my resolutions from my own personal goals, and things I felt would make myself happier if I got accomplished. But this month, the realization actually stemmed from work.
In my current job, I’m the only entry/junior-level employee on my team, while everyone else is senior-level. We’ve all been training for something new, and while my co-workers have been so helpful to me and have been supporting me in my work transition every step of the way, there’s so much for me to learn and remember and understand, and sometimes it’s a lot to handle. Many times I feel I should be more ahead than where I am, even though everyone expects me to be working at the pace that I am.
After one particularly crazy day, I asked my supervisor for more training, and detailed what I called my “problem areas” and what I want to do to work on them. Her response changed my whole perspective – she doesn’t view them as “problem areas”, but “growth areas.”
Growth – isn’t that what I themed this project around in the first place?
She also listed some things she’s observed that I’m particularly good at as places to build upon further, and that she’s happy to see that I want to work on these things so early in my career.
When I got that e-mail, I felt so much better for the day I was having, and I really appreciated the support I have at my job. But it also got me thinking about how I’ve been structuring my self-improvement goals, and the way I look at myself. I look at situations positively, I do my best to prepare for the worst, and try to find the good in anything. But when I look at myself, I don’t do any of that. Everybody has always told me I’m too hard on myself, but now I’m seeing that – and how it’s limiting me.
The fact that I’m working on being a better me is a good thing, so I shouldn’t be so hard on myself when I fail. It’s harder to grow that way. So this month, I’m going to take things from a different perspective. Here’s how I’m going to do that:
Think of my goals differently.
My go-to “Identify the problem” is from Gretchen Rubin’s book, and I’m not going to change that strategy. But when I’m looking at the ways I want to improve myself, that’s exactly what they are – improvements. I can’t look at myself as a “problem” that needs fixing. I need to look at myself as a person who’s looking to maximize their potential. The potential, the good things – those are already there. I just need to learn how to use those things to be better and achieve the goals I’ve set for myself.
Consider what I’m doing well.
My e-mail conversation with my supervisor helped me realize some things I didn’t realize were emerging skills of mine. If I start looking at my hobbies, my personal skills, my communication skills, etc. the same way, there’s quite a bit I can learn from myself. And if I build my goals from those things, I believe this will set me on a path with a greater chance of success.
Re-phrase how I look at my goals.
No more “I’m bad at this!” or “I need to be better at that!”
Building off the last goal, I want to start my goals with saying what I’m doing well within that area. Instead, I want to re-phrase my goals like this:
“I’ve been doing well at X lately. I will build upon this skill by doing Y and Z.”
I’ve learned that when it comes to goal-setting, writing your goals with intent and writing the specifics of said goal will be much more beneficial. I think building on top of this method with reminding myself of where I’m growing will do two things:
- It will remind me of what I’m doing well, and help me view my goals in a more positive way.
- It will make the goal appear more realistic to achieve, and make me more motivated to pursue it.
This method of goal setting feels a bit like writing affirmations, but more specific to your goals and with a very specific intent. I’m excited to work on this.
When things go wrong, consider my self-talk.
When working on thinking positively the past couple of years, I think I’ve made a lot of headway in conquering negative self-talk. But sometimes it still slips, and sometimes I realize that the littlest things that I think of are not helping my confidence.
Instead of telling myself, “I can’t”, I might instead tell myself that I didn’t get it this time, but now I’m going to make a new plan and try again. And instead of telling myself, “I failed”, I can tell myself that I did the best I could, figure out what exactly didn’t go right, and how I can rectify it and prevent it in the future. Things might be going wrong, but taking the opportunity to make it more positive and productive, is a better alternative than being hard on myself and being caught in a negative loop.
I think this month will be a game-changer for me in terms of goal-setting, and I hope this perspective will not only be helpful to committing to my goals, but also yours! What are your current goals? Let me know below.
Sincerely,
Julie Anna
