For a lot of people, May is when it finally starts to feel like spring. While spring begins in March, the end of that month and all of April can still feel wintery (or rainy). May is a month of better weather and flowers, when everything seems new and in bloom.
This is why May might be a good time to check-in with yourself, to see how you’re feeling about any goals or resolutions you set in the early days of the new year. It might be a good time to pivot and make some different goals if the first set of goals aren’t going quite the way you wanted.
If you’re feeling down about those original goals not panning out, this is the time to give yourself a pep talk.
Many of us were told as children not to be “quitters”. If we started something, we had to finish it, whether that be eating our peas at the dinner table or playing a sport. There are a lot of benefits to staying the course and continuing on even when you might not feel like it. We all go through periods where we feel meh, and often if we give ourselves time and continue on, we come through it with a sense of pride for having gotten through it.
But sometimes staying the course simply isn’t possible due to things like illness, job changes, or the needs of a child or loved one. We shouldn’t feel bad if we can’t meet a goal when things have changed or if we come to the realization that we really did not know what we were getting in to. That does not make you a quitter. Stop being so hard on yourself. The world does enough of that for us!
It’s possible, too, that the goal was too big and broad given the constraints of our lives. Big plans are exciting to make but often hard to achieve. Maybe the thing to do now in this time of self-reflection is to break your big goal into smaller steps that will give you a more immediate reason to celebrate. Think achievable. Think realistically.
That isn’t quitting; that is pivoting. Be kind to yourself to allow for a change in direction.
Other times, it may very well be in your best interest to quit. If that word bothers you, think of pivoting, of changing direction but staying on a path forward. Staying on the same course when it isn’t working is foolish and a waste of time and resources. If you were driving on the road and saw an obstacle in your lane, would you keep in the same lane because you had “committed” to it? Of course not.
Think of recalibrating your goals as re-assessing and pivoting to be able to reach them better given what you have going on in your life. It happens to all of us. The key is to have some goal which will give you a sense of purpose and direction in life. This is an important part of the Make A Way Mindset!