Recently, I was in a situation where I didn’t meet my goals. If you frequently read my articles, you know that I’m a swimmer and that it’s a pretty big part of my life. Recently, at my championship meet, I didn’t swim as fast as I wanted to. But I’m only a junior, and I have another year left, so I sat down and tried to reconcile and move forward. Here’s what I did.
- Make Peace With The Outcome of Your Situation
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Not achieving your goals is really disappointing. When we set goals, we set them in order to make ourselves and our lives better, and when we fail to reach them, it’s a really hard thing to process. I think that the first step of moving on and doing better the next time around is to try to accept what happened is in the past, and there is nothing you can do about it.
- Evaluate What You Did Well
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Rarely when we don’t meet a goal does EVERYTHING go wrong. It’s important to look at what went right in a given situation so we know what to keep doing. For example, if your goal was to get all A’s and you didn’t meet that goal, but you went to tutoring hours and did all of your homework, that’s important! Those tutoring hours and homework probably helped immensely, even if they didn’t help you meet your goals completely. The next semester, you will probably want to continue doing these things.
Another reason evaluating what you did well is so important is because it helps keep us in check. So many of us driven, goal-setting college students are really hard on ourselves. We need to keep a realistic perspective and understand that being kind to ourselves and recognizing what we did well can be nearly as valuable as recognizing what we did wrong.
- Evaluate What You Can Improve On
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This is the real meat of this process, and probably the hardest part, because it requires us to be painfully honest with ourselves. And then, sometimes, when we do the heavy emotional work of being honest and thinking about what we can improve on, we can get stuck. Sometimes, you really don’t know what you need to do differently! Talk to people who can help. Friends, professors, family members, coaches, whoever has expertise in the area you’re struggling with. And if you don’t want to talk to people about your struggle (which is totally valid!), the internet often has good advice too. Read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts about whatever it is you need help with. There are lots of resources!
- Adjust Your Expectations
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Sometimes, we set goals that we can’t reach. This can be really disheartening to think about, especially if you’re worried that you can’t reach your goal, but more often than not, we usually just forget that sometimes our progress is slow. Maybe that goal you set is something you’re never going to reach in six months. Maybe you adjust your expectations and realize that it’s going to take longer to reach your goal, maybe it’s going to take you a year instead of six months. Maybe setting a less lofty goal for six months out is a better idea, sort of like a stepping stone to your final, original goal!
- Set New Goals
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This is the fresh start. Taking everything you’ve just thought about, consider what you did well, what you need to improve on, and your new expectations and set a new goal. Write it down. Make it measurable, and make sure that you have steps planned out to reach it. If your goal is to get an A in a hard class, make sure that you have a plan in place for how to reach it, for example, you’re going to visit the professor so many times a week and ask questions about things you’re confused about, find someone to tutor you, and study for tests and quizzes with your classmates who are getting better grades than you. Do what it takes!
- Try Again!
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This is the exciting part: the action! You get to make a change now. Make sure that you follow your plan to achieve your goal, and keep yourself on track. Sometimes it’s helpful to tell someone your goal who you trust, and ask them to check in on you periodically and make sure that you’re staying on track. You got this!