Goal Setting vs New Year's Resolutions

Each year, I try to review my goals as opposed to setting New Year's resolutions. I find it more fulfilling to achieve a goal than to stick to a resolution.

I dig out my copy of Steven Covey's First Things First and an old guidance book entitled Holistic Learning: Success in the Classroom and in Life by Julius Greff. Covey goes into the philosophy of setting goals that would meet our physical, social, mental, and spiritual needs. Self-awareness, reflection and planning theoretically allow us to live and work, doing the important things versus the things that are emergent or wasting our time. Greff has a section devoted to the demonstration of how goal setting can be accomplished through brainstorming and short listing. I find both to be effective tools in reviewing and setting my own goals.

Because we have more than one role in life, it is important to find balance between them. For example, my role as principal is no less and no more important than my role as grandmother. However, at different times, each role pulls at me significantly more than the other. Still, a balance is needed if I am to meet all of my needs as a human being. It is in an attempt to find this balance, that I once again review my goals in life. :-)