cAs per tradition, i first days of January lead to confront the inevitable list of good resolutions for the new year. Whether it’s wanting change lifestylefocusing on a healthier diet and carving out time to do some physical activity, or to desire an improvement at work, good resolutions are none other than those small or large goals that everyone wants to achieve.
have some targets it is in fact fundamental since childhood, also to get to know oneself better. However, it is essential to know how to identify and process them correctly, also to avoid the risk that they become a reason for anxiety and stress. How to do? here are the advice from experts of Guidapsicologi.it.
Good intentions: why do you need to have goals?
The first thing worth thinking about is that Having goals is essential in life. why is it there spring that allows you to carry out your own projects and realize your personal goals.
«Goals are essential to achieve our goals and, in some way, they are what causes change to take place in the desired direction – explain the psychologists – They are the ‘step by step’, what allows you to go from A to B. Furthermore, goals allow us to measure, monitor, know our progress and know on the one hand what we need to improve and, on the other, what we are good at and need to enhance. They allow us to get to know each other better and favor our development, thus contributing to our personal growth».
Good intentions and objectives: there are also those who prefer to abstain
But there is also who turns up their nose at the idea of compiling a list of good intentions or in any case to define one’s own objectives, putting them “in black and white” and planning strategies to achieve them, preferring, on the contrary, to let oneself go, to ‘flow’.
“I am those who claim not to worry so much about the future but to focus on the present to fully experience it – explain the experts of Guidapiscologists.it – However goals are also needed to flow, even if these are small, few or very short-term objectives. For example: a person who does not know what he wants to devote himself to (does not know his purpose), will let himself go, and in his flow, decides to study psychology because he likes it, but not because there is a desire to engage in this discipline in a way systematic and for specific purposes. She lets herself be carried away by the present and flows with it. However, he actually already has a goalwhich is to “study psychology”. In a certain way, when we flow, we ourselves mark that flow with small goals taken unconsciously».
At what point in life does it become essential to have goals
The objectives, however, are fundamental ever since we were children. What changes in the course of life is certainly the type of goals we set ourselves and the way to fix them and put them into focus.
«In adolescence, we begin to have more tangible dreams and goals, so our goals also get a little more elaborate. – the experts explain – It must also be emphasized that it is a period in which the objectives are generally less personal. They are not tied to the intrinsic motivation to like oneself, but to the extrinsic one to like others. It is in youth then that our concern for the future increasesmaking us more aware of the importance of pursuing goals that allow us to guide our path towards what we really want. This is when we start setting more elaborate goals, known as “life goals”».
Good intentions and goals to achieve: can they have negative aspects?
Young woman writes daily next to the window.
Identifying good New Year’s resolutions, therefore, could be a positive practice, if understood as a way to focus on your goals so as to pursue a dream, a project or in any case a goal you want to achieve. However, be careful don’t fall into the trap of goals that risk becoming a source of frustrationstress or even anxiety.
“This could happen, for example, if you set yourself an unrealistic goal – conclude the experts of Guidapsicologi.it – Not reaching the proposed objective, it can generate a feeling of personal failurea state of frustration that can lead the person to self-punishment through one’s own internal dialogue, blaming oneself for not trying hard enough, or feeling humiliated that one does not possess the necessary skills to achieve the goal. These dynamics can also cause a drop in self-esteem which makes it difficult to make decisions. Another example of wrong and badly posed goal, is when its achievement does not depend so much on the subject but rather on external elements. The subject in question, who repeatedly finds himself failing to achieve the goal, can end up developing learned helplessness».
So what to do because good intentions really turn into concrete goals to be achieved? In the gallery, the advice and strategies provided by the experts.
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