Goal Setting: Why You Should Forgive Yourself When Life Gets In The Way

One thing I’ve learned about myself since joining the Instagram art community is that I love encouraging people. It must be the teacher in me.

As part of my 10 Minutes a Day challenge, I want to cheer you on and build you up. I absolutely love finding new goals and finding ways to accomplish them. I soak up the tips on goal-setting I hear on podcasts and read in books, and I love applying them to my own goals. I want to share some of those tips and tricks with you!

Today’s tip is hopefully a freeing one. No matter when you started your 10 Minutes a Day goal, there’s a good chance that you may have missed a day (or two… or in my case, nearly a full week) and you lost some momentum. Because guess what? Life happened.

In the past, I used to add up all those missed opportunities and make myself catch up. If I tried NaNoWriMo and I missed my daily word count, I’d add those to my next day until I caught up. And you know what? I never caught up. The number kept getting bigger, and I eventually got discouraged and gave up.

When it comes to goal-setting, the best thing I’ve done for myself is forgiving myself for missed days. Instead of counting up missed opportunities, I focus on the possibilities of today. It has been so freeing to just let go. I no longer feel discouraged or guilty because life happened and got in the way of my personal goals. In fact, letting go allows me to actually feel excited when I finally do have the time to pick up my goal again!

So let me be a little vulnerable here and confess what my goal is for the next three months: I want to write. I want to write fiction. It’s always been a dream of mine. So I’m going to work toward that. By Christmastime, I want to establish a habit of writing, planning, and learning to write a fiction novel.

…but I dropped off on my daily goals last week. I was traveling, then I missed on sleep because of my toddler, then I slept too much to catch up. Life happened. Instead of making myself stay up and get caught up on 50 minutes of writing in one night, or even forcing myself to do an extra ten minutes until I was caught up, I let go. I started each day as a new one with just ten minutes to steal.

It’s been a whole week, but I finally feel fully revived and ready to get back to ten minutes today. And I don’t feel bad about it. Actually, I feel excited to sit down and get my ten minutes today!

No matter if you’re two weeks or two days in with me, if you dropped off on your goal, it’s OK. Let’s focus on today. What can you do with today? Fight for your 10 minutes. Steal them if you have to. It’s so worth it!

If you’re joining me on the 10 Minutes A Day Challenge, leave a comment here or find me on Instagram @nerdladydraws! I’d love to cheer you on as you move closer to that thing you wish you could always do!