As summer ends and recedes into memory, we turn our focus to the start of a new year in the Jewish calendar, which coincides with the back-to-school season. Even people who are not in the life stage of driving carpools and picking out lunchboxes at Target can have an awareness that a fresh beginning is at hand as they see the yellow school buses return to the roadways. Rosh Hashana and the fall chagim (holidays) are surely right around the corner! Life can seem full of promise and hope that we and our loved ones will be able to reach our personal and spiritual goals. Yet, the beginning of a new year and a fresh slate can also evoke a mix of feelings at that prospect, ranging from curiosity and excitement to fear and dread, and sometimes many of those at the same time.

Setting Manageable Goals

As we contemplate how to start our year off on the best foot, we can get swept up in a long list of action items that can seem to help us move towards our goals but can be self-defeating. While setting goals for the new year can be helpful to get to our intended destination, it is also important to set realistic and manageable goals so that we don’t set ourselves up for failure with goals that are beyond our reach. Another problem with ineffective goal setting is that we can become so overwhelmed by very lofty goals that we avoid starting the process altogether and then engage in excessive self-criticism, self-blame, and self-loathing for our perceived failures.

Avoidance plays a significant role in maintaining unhelpful patterns of thinking and behavior that contribute to a spiral of depression and anxiety. Although avoidance provides short-term relief from uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and sensations, it ultimately causes long-term difficulties by reinforcing the belief that things are too difficult for you and you can’t handle it, which makes you more likely to rely upon avoidance as a coping mechanism in the future. Repeated avoidance and withdrawal can shrink your world and increase depression and anxiety with fewer opportunities for positive experiences or corrective feedback about yourself, others, and the future.

Creating SMART Goals

A useful acronym of strategies for effective goal setting is to create SMART goals, based on the work of George Doran (1981), who described how to write management objectives:

S · Specific

Goals should not be vague and amorphous, such as, “I am going to clean my house.” Rather, the goal should be something very specific, such as “I am going to pick up all the dirty laundry on my bedroom floor and wash, dry, fold, and put it away in the correct drawers.”

M · Measurable

Create a goal that can be quantified. For example, plan a measurable goal such as walking one mile (vs I am going to exercise), reading three chapters of my textbook (vs I am going to study), or creating four PowerPoint slides for an upcoming presentation (vs I am going to work on my presentation).

A · Achievable (by me)

It is important to select goals that we have the ability to achieve. If your goal is to get a job, you cannot fully control whether or not you will be able to achieve that goal because the hiring manager may not select you. Instead, the goal can be to submit three job applications. Similarly, a goal of making friends may not be fully up to you, but you can set an achievable (by you) goal to ask two people at work this week about how they spent their weekend.

R · Realistic

Set a goal that is realistic and build on successes. Rather than expecting a child who does not like to read to complete three books this week, set an initial goal of a few pages and expand the expectation gradually as they achieve successes.

T · Time Bound

Set a time to complete the activity to make it more likely that you follow through on your goal. Rather than saying I am going to walk one mile tomorrow, plan a time that you will take your walk. Without a planned time, the day can get away from us and we never get around to taking our intended walk.

Making Room for Self-Compassion

By setting SMART goals, we can help set ourselves up for success to reach our goals for the coming new year. Nonetheless, as the sage Rashi famously quotes in several places, Kol hatchalot kashot—All beginnings are difficult. It is useful to remember that we are mere mortals and therefore inherently imperfect. We can benefit from practicing self-compassion when we make mistakes or fall short of our goals. We can also practice both acceptance AND change, which can seem like opposites, but these concepts actually go together.

People fear that if they accept where they are at the moment, then they will stay stuck there and never change. The opposite is true. When we don’t accept where we are and who we are, and instead condemn ourselves as unworthy, incompetent, or unlovable, it becomes exceedingly difficult to believe that we are capable of undertaking the hard work necessary for meaningful change, which then leaves us stuck.

No school would hire a coach to go into the locker room before a big game to tell the team that they are awful and never do anything right and will surely lose. That is not motivational to facilitate change. Instead, if we are trying to motivate the team, we might acknowledge that they have had a tough season and things didn’t always go their way, but we know that they can dig deep and find the strength and courage to go out there and try to change things up today.

Growing with Loving Kindness

As we prepare for the Yamim Nora’im (High Holy Days), consider acknowledging your flaws and accepting that you have made mistakes while striving to do better. Nobody is so perfect that they are excused from asking for forgiveness and praying over the holidays. Let us think about ourselves with loving kindness and self-compassion as we set SMART goals, accept ourselves as works in progress, and strive to change, grow, and improve upon our past mistakes and shortcomings.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year!