How to Create 6 Epic Mini-Goals to Skyrocket Happiness

If you do not achieve your goals then it makes you unhappy. However, if you’re able to tick off the goals from your list then you feel happy. Learn how you can keep yourself motivated and skyrocket your happiness by creating achievable mini goals. Try out the activities and feel it for yourself. ~ Ed.

 

You sigh. Not again.

You don’t want to make yet more goals that you’re not going to complete.

These uncompleted goals pile up and become a wooly mammoth – too big to tackle.

You don’t have the energy to tackle that mammoth.

You don’t like seeing yourself not finish something. It’s depressing.

You wish you didn’t have to make goals; there’s never enough time to achieve all that you want to achieve.

Yet, if you don’t keep trying, you’ll stay stuck where you are, unfulfilled.

You think the answer to happiness is creating yet more goals. If you keep at it, doing the same thing, eventually one goal must be achieved, right?

But the truth is that when you keep doing something the same way, you keep getting the same results. You must do something different to get a different result.

Goals No One Ever Thinks About – But Should

Here are some mini goals that you’d not have thought about but these can help you keep yourself motivated to become a goal achiever. 

Write Your Obituary

Writing your obituary now is a wake-up call. It forces you to think about what you ultimately want to achieve and the person you want to be in life.

Your obituary reveals your character and is a focus of your life, condensed to a few hundred words.

The first part of the obituary is your name, age, where you are from, date and place of death, and cause of death.

The end of the obituary names your survivors and provides information about the funeral services.

The middle part is your life story.

What’s unnerving is your age. To what age do you want to live?

If you’re 50 now and want to live to 85. That’s 35 years! 35 years to accomplish what you want to accomplish. That’s a lot of time.

Think about things like:

• Major accomplishments
  • What milestones in life did you reach?
  • Sports, education, philanthropy
• Organizations you belonged to
  • What did you achieve?
• Who you became
  • What do you want to be known for?
  • Who do you want your children looking up to?
  • What adjectives would you want used to describe you?
• Military background
• Active in community or church
• Other worthy highlights

Think about how you want to be remembered and written about in the newspaper for all time, never to be edited or updated.

Activity: Write your 500-word obituary today.

Include the beginning and the ending.

Then, in the middle section, write your life story. How happy are you about what you wrote? How far off are you from being the person you want to be?

Next, identify 3 goals from your obituary you want to work towards, right now.

Then, start planning on meeting those goals.

Who do you want to be when someone else writes your life story?

Be Unrealistic

We’ve all been told to be realistic at various times in our lives. And we’ve listened.

What being realistic really does, though, is it stops us from dreaming big.

Think back to when you were a kid – what big dreams did you have? It’s only when we get older that we fall into the trap of believing our big dreams are too big.

When we are kids, adults encourage and support us. They have nothing to fear from a child.

Then, as we get older, our friends and maybe family members try to squash those dreams.

Our big dreams are so far-fetched we couldn’t possibly reach them, right? And those beliefs are supported by the naysayers out there.

Stop listening to the naysayers and listen to your heart.

Remember, too, what may seem like a big dream to one person may not seem so big to another person.

What big, unrealistic dream do you have?

Activity: Be unrealistic.

If you think about your obituary from above, you may have 35 years to see that big dream come to fruition. So be unrealistic! What are 2 mini-goals you can set for yourself today?

Think of these questions:

• What is my dream?
• What firm decision to pursue my dream do I need to make, right now?
• Who do I need support from – emotionally and mentally?

As Norman Vincent Peale once said, “Shoot for the moon. If you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

Is Your Hobby A Lost Art?

While we all are told to focus on our careers and goals to achieve becoming the next big person at work or making a certain salary, we must remember our hobbies.

Hobbies bring us joy.

Hobbies give us that mental break from work that stresses us out and make us irritable. In fact, hobbies act as a stress reliever.

Has life gotten in the way of your hobby? What did you used to do that you really enjoyed?

It’s time to get back to that.Even if it’s 1 hour a week. That one hour can do wonders for your mental happiness.

Don’t have a hobby or know what it might be? Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Working puzzles – jigsaw, crossword, sudoku
• Running – trail or road
• Hiking or walking
• Riding a bicycle – trail or road
• Cooking – savory or sweet
• Reading – novels, non-fiction, comic books, magazines
• Sewing – embroidery, quilting, cross-stitching, making clothes, making household items
• Playing or watching sports – golf, tennis, soccer, swimming, ping-pong, bowling, there are so many!

Activity: Bring back your hobby this week!

Find the time to do something about it. It doesn’t have to be for a long period of time. Even 30 minutes can make a difference.

Then, do it again next week. See if you can go longer than 30 minutes. Or, break it out into two mini-goal sessions – how about two 20-minute activities?

Let It Go – Twice

Letting go has two perspectives.

#1. First, letting go means you need to free yourself of a feeling you’ve been harboring.

What is that feeling? Anger, regret, control.Something else?

No matter the feeling you have, it usually comes down to forgiveness. Forgiving someone isn’t it about the other person. It’s about you.

You might say, I can’t forgive that person! Look at what they did! How could I forgive?

Forgiving doesn’t mean you agree with what they did. Forgiving means you give yourself the power to be free, let go, and move on.

Holding on to what happened is like a cancer to your mind. It blocks you from getting better and improving.

Activity: Free yourself of what you’ve been harboring.

Do it for yourself. Do it for your happiness. Today.

#2. Second, letting go has another perspective: letting go of something on your plate.

• How much do you have going on right now?
• What do you need to let go?
• Is there anything can you let go?
• What can someone else handle?
• What committee do you need a break from?

The idea is to un-overload yourself to reduce that overwhelming, weight bearing feeling that you can have by having too much to do.

Take stock, today, at what’s on your calendar. What are the absolute most important and what are the least important? What would you rather do?

This quick action can help you set some parameters, too, as to what’s important for your happiness.

Removing things that don’t make you happy can skyrocket your mood. It immediately lifts your spirits.

Activity: What can you take off your plate, right now, this week? What can you delegate to someone else? What can you say no to?

Personalized for Three People

Often, we’re told to personalize our goals, make the goals about us. However, that can lead to a self-seeking life.

Instead, focus on others. Focus your energies on helping others. What can you do for someone else that would bring that person joy?

We know doing something for others in a selfless act can boost our own happiness. Happiness is contagious and you’ll feel good about yourself for helping someone else.

• Is there an elderly or widowed person that needs help with something?
• Does your child want you to play with them, even for a few minutes?
• Have you been meaning to reach out to that one person who keeps calling or emailing you?

You find yourself saying, I don’t have the time.

That time can never be regained. And as more time is lost, we lose more of our happiness without even realizing it.

Until. We wake up one day and wonder where did the time go?

How much longer do you want to go on before you realize what’s happening?

Stop. Think about those around you. Who needs your help, today?

Activity: Help someone else this week.

• Who do you know that could use a little help from you, this week?
• Repeat this activity 3 times within the next 13 weeks.

Ignore the Timeline

Timelines make goals feel rigid. Then, when you must constantly change the date, it can make you feel like a failure.

Don’t frustrate yourself. Instead, focus on achieving, not on time.

Yes, we should have an end in mind, but it doesn’t have to be time-based. It can be action-based.

For instance, you might need to service the lawn mower before you can mow the lawn, but could those be done on the same day?

Or, do you need to seed the lawn before you can even attempt to mow the lawn?

Activity: Take stock of what you want to achieve.

• Order them based on priority, not time.
• What must you do first?
• What must you do next?
• And what timeline can you take out of it to lessen the stress of completing it?

Challenge – It’s Your Turn

Not finishing goals is not a good feeling. In fact, it can be downright demoralizing.

Especially when it continues again and again.

But looking at creating goals with a new perspective can have exceptional effects on your happiness.

Just imagine – getting out of bed, stretching your arms, taking a deep breath, smiling, and saying today is a great day!

Imagine feeling good that you accomplished one of your mini-goals. And then another.

Imagine those completed mini-goals leading to several goals being checked off your list.

To start, choose one of the activities above and try it out this week.

Try a new technique each week, for 13 weeks. Some of these techniques are done more than once, but differently, like Let It Go – Twice.

13 weeks is a season, and this is the season of the happier you.

You could skyrocket your happiness by the end of the week.

Over to you

How does achieving goals make you feel? What do you think about these goals and activities? Share them in the comments.