How To Reframe Your Growth When Your 2020 Goals Are Obstructed

Photo by Yukie Emiko on Unsplash

For most of us, these days and weeks feel as if we’re on a sailboat in the middle of an oceanic storm. One paddle broken and the other splintered and rough from the near-constant barrage. We’re six months into one of the hardest, most unexpected years of the last half-century.

No one planned for this. No one based their 2020 goals with these days in mind. We’re trying to learn how to thrive while in the middle of a survival mission for our very souls, and few know how to evaluate if they are doing a good job.

In light of this, I started looking into how we could seek to adjust our goals moving forward in ways that brings value and affirmation to our lives, not shame and guilt.

With so much change, we’d be hard-pressed to cling to our old standards of achievement when evaluating the success or effectiveness of our own personal growth.

In light of extreme disruption, we have to be willing to disrupt our thinking about our goals.

For me, that disruption comes in one of three ways:

Drop. Tweak. Raise.

Be Free to Drop a Goal

As I reflected back on 2019 and looked ahead to what I thought the future months would hold, I came up with a list of 12 personal goals I wanted to accomplish in 2020.

Four yearly goals. Four quarterly goals. Four monthly goals.

I had a wide variety of goals, including some physical, some financial, mental, some spiritual. I came up with some big goals like wanting to do 10,000 pushups (roughly 28 each day) or publishing 150,000 words throughout the year.

I also had some goofy and more spontaneous goals, like hosting a murder mystery party for my friends or learning how to bake a great loaf of bread. Yes, baking bread was on my list far before COVID made it popular.

After six months of 2020, I’m not on pace to hit all 12 of my goals. And that’s okay. My wife and I may not be able to buy a new car this year. I may not have the mental stamina to memorize the book of Philippians like I was originally intending in Q4. And I likely won’t be hosting that murder mystery party after all.

My life has been seriously disrupted so I’m good with disrupting my goals a bit. I’m dropping a few.

Maybe you drop one goal that is adding a lot of extra and unneeded stress to your life. Maybe you drop all of your goals.

There is great wisdom in realizing both the brevity and the longevity of life. You don’t get forever, but you will likely get more than tomorrow. Take a deep breath and be willing to drop a goal or two.

Understand That Tweaking Isn’t Failing

The best news about goal-setting is that your goals aren’t set in stone. They are malleable.

That doesn’t mean that you should allow excuses to drive you to alter your goals. Very few people truly grow on accident or without pushing themselves past their comfort zone.

But remember that what we’re dealing with here in 2020 is not an excuse. It’s a global, devastating disruption. There is a big difference between “I can’t make it to practice because I stayed up too late” and “I can’t make it to practice because I got t-boned by a semi-truck and barrel-flipped 14 times into a ditch.” One is an excuse, the other is a big, crazy disruption.

At the root level of every goal is the desire for growth. You want to continue becoming more healthy, more intelligent, more responsible. It doesn’t matter if you read 75 books or 60.

What matters are the inches you gain, not necessarily the miles you accumulate.

So as necessary, tweak your goals and remember, you didn’t fail. You found a better goal that pushes your growth while prioritizing your health.

If You Have Margin, Consider Bumping Up

One of the odd gifts of this quarantine season for many has been a sense of increased margin. With calendars suddenly becoming more clear, work transitioning to more home-based practices, and normal activities like grabbing dinner out or going to a movie being halted, many people have found themselves with a bit more time on their hands than originally anticipated.

Obviously, this isn’t the case for all of us. Parents who have become full-time teachers and nannies on top of their full-time jobs have had no increased margin. Neither have many good leaders.

But if you do find yourself with a bit of extra margin, perhaps you can evaluate some of your 2020 goals by choosing to bump up your metrics.

Maybe you’ve been able to write more, so instead of publishing 50 articles, you can now shoot for 65. Maybe you’ve been able to be outside more so instead of running 100 miles this year you can now aim for 150. Or maybe you have a bit more space in front of your computer so you can now take Michael Thompson’s advice and get more on the radar of the people you admire.

Remember that if you opt to bump up your goals, you aren’t doing so out of pride. If the race is different for all of us in this season, there is no first-place trophy.

Lean Forward with Grace

In light of extreme disruption, these four words, if internalized, can begin to change your life. Lean forward with grace.

You can’t control every circumstance. You can’t even really control what happens tomorrow. If you hinge your goals on your ability to control the outcome, you’ll fail. But if you can keep moving forward, keep growing, keep learning, you’ll win.

The secret, however, in leaning forward is to do so with grace. This may be your first survival mission so it’s perfectly normal that you don’t feel like you’re thriving. There’s grace for that. There’s grace for the messy, the confused, the hurting, the weary. There’s enough for you and for me, so let’s keep leaning forward together.