Hi and welcome back, today we are going to talk about relationship goals. This is a harder part of goal setting because it can be hard to measure and even harder to say with complete confidence that you have been successful. Why because it involves other people and people are always messing you up when it comes to achieving your goals.
You also can’t use the SMART principle on some of these goals. It’s would be stupid to have a goal that you are going to be married by next Sept 1 as your goal if you haven’t got someone special in your life and you haven’t been on a date in years.
But all is not lost. You can have and should have relationship goals that do meet the SMART acronym but what you will find is to be successful they will all focus on things that you have complete or almost have complete control of.
Let’s take the goal that you want to spend more quality time with your spouse. So you could use the following.
By December 31 of this year, my spouse and I will have spent 3 weekends away.
Or
Before the first of the year, my spouse and I will plan our summer vacation.
Maybe your goals are a little tougher.
By the end of this month we will have found a marriage counselor that can help us reconnect together.
I will tell her I love her every day and mean it
Maybe you have a strained relationship with a parent or an old friend. Maybe you need to be the first to hold out the olive branch.
I will call my Mom once every 2 weeks starting this week.
I’m going to call it quits on the relationship goals, not because I don’t have much to say but this type of goal is includes so much and yet is individual to all of us that it would be hard to scratch the surface.
So let me leave you with this piece of advice.
Success does not guarantee happiness. You happiness is completely separate from being successful. You only have to look at the rich and famous entertainment stars to understand this.
Crushing your goals and making your targets will not mean much if you have worked so hard and so focused that your spouse has left you and you missed the kids growing up. Are your parents still alive? Make it a goal to spend time with them. The world will seem a bit colder after they are gone.
Also if your kids see you spending time with your parents and calling them, hopefully, they will model you and call home to talk to you.
Sorry to end on a heavy note but in the words of Peter Trueman who ended the news after an interest piece he would say “That is not news. But that, too, is reality”
Till next time
Percy