The end of December, and a new year, looms… filled with both possibilities and pitfalls.
Yes, this is the time of the year when many of us talk about goals, and even New Year’s Resolutions and such… the air is actually thick with good intentions.
Sometimes it feels like the most challenging part of this whole proposition is to actually set realistic goals for yourself, in a world typically driven by Hopium and wishful thinking.
Even if it is not as a result of pressure from our actual friends and peers, many of us feel under tremendous societal peer pressure to set goals and make bold statements about what we want to achieve… goals that might not even succeed in our wildest dreams!
After all, shouting ”I’m going to DOUBLE sales next year!” from the rooftops sounds a lot more exciting and inspiring than just admitting that you’d be pretty impressed if you managed to increase sales by just 10%!
I can already hear a few voices from the peanut gallery offering feedback such as ”What’s the problem with a bit of harmless fun?”
The "problem" is that it may not be as harmless as you think, because of how our psyche processes information and feedback from the world around us, and how we process actual experience.
Humans tend to internalize things a lot, and that lofty 100% sales goal — even if it is intended to be inspiring — is likely going to set us up for almost certain failure (unless you know something the rest of the world doesn’t... in which case, good for you!) while setting that modest 10% goal leaves us with a relatively good chance of ending the year with success.
Would you rather fail or celebrate success?
As I said, the human psyche can be difficult to understand… but having a small success does a lot more good for our overall mental health than having a failure at some grand scheme.
We may try to convince ourselves that we’re just going to pick ourselves up and try even harder the following year... and while that may be true we still are likely to feel small tendrils of doubt creep into our thinking (and actions) and there might be a sense of inadequacy and shame associated with the previous failure, and our self-esteem might even have taken a small hit in the process.
Of course, failure is an inevitable part of the human experience… BUT we’d do well not to set ourselves up for failure by setting goals out of irrational exuberance, as opposed to a measured sense of what is actually realistically possible and likely.
For example, I’m not going to set investment and financial goals for my Hive activities in 2025 based on the idea that Hive is going to climb to $2.00. Whereas it would be undeniably great if it did, I’m not going to start working the year based on such grand assumptions.
Hive finished 2022 at about $0.25, 2023 at near $0.37 and might finish 2024 at about $0.35. Accordingly, I’m going to base 2025 on maybr $0.40 cent Hive… and if we end up above that, it will just be a pleasant upside surprise!
Similarly, I'm likely going to end this year at around 760 HP. I could set some grand and hopeful goal that involves writing every day and reaching 2,500 HP by the end of 2025. However, I actually added about 300 HP in 2024, so setting a goal of 1,200 HP by the end of 2025 is plenty ambitious for me... and not even that is final!
I know myself well enough to know that I am actually not ever going to create content every day and even once a week is pushing my luck.
So, consider carefully what you set yourself up for, when you set your goals for the New Year!
Till the next one... I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
