Re-evaluating.

eval·u·ate

\i-ˈval-yə-ˌwāt, -yü-ˌāt\

verb

• : to judge the value or condition of (someone or something) in a carefuland thoughtful way
• : to determine the significance, worth, or condition of usually by careful appraisal and study usually by careful appraisal and study.

I remember the first few days of this year, how I sat and

made plans. I wrote down my resolutions for the year in this beautiful journal, and they were quite a handful I must say. Almost nine months down the line, I revisited that journal. Let me backtrack here by saying that it’s not the first time I’m doing it since January, although it has not been a regular fixture in my routine, I must confess.

Seeing all the goals I set for myself back then and looking at my life in present day gave me mixed feelings; I had made progress in some areas and completely forgotten about others. This has prompted me to re-evaluate those goals. Why did I fail at achieving them? What were the pitfalls in the plans I made? Was there any identify able reason why this plan was not working out at all, or not that the pace I would have liked? How can I do better? I am currently asking myself these questions. If you wrote down resolutions for 2018 like I did, I think you should ask yourself these questions too.

People make tons of new decisions year in year out, flake in a month, and maybe forget about them in two. Some have even stopped making resolutions because of the consecutive failures in keeping up with them. May I suggest to you that a reason you may be consistently not achieving these goals-whatever they may be-is because you’re not consistently re-evaluating them?

Many have heard of making SMART goals: goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Most of us know the drill, and even made plans that checked the SMART boxes.

And then we never went back to some of those plans.

You see, writing the vision is not enough. I have learnt (and still learning) that reaching a desired goal requires you to constantly go back to the drawing board to analyse your progress made, to know which methods work and which methods don’t. It may require you having to change your method if the one being used is achieving no result. Remember what was said about the person doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

In case you’ve not gotten the drift by now, let me give an example. Let us say your goal was to read more books more this year, however on evaluating yourself at the third month, you realised that you were barely over a book, where your goal was to read two every three months. You’ll then ask yourself why you read at a slower pace than expected, and you may have to increase the time you allot to reading.

This is where a lot of us tend to fall short sometimes. We don’t really take time go back to your goals and adjust our plans. When we take time out away from the noise of everyday life to check on ourselves, we can identify areas of our lives in which we just appear busy but are not making any progress. We can reboot, edit and restructure our lives to be more efficient.

With less than 90 days to the end of this year, I encourage anyone who made resolutions this year to go back to where they were written and check on them. If you have been doing this, well done! Please keep it up, and please teach the rest of us how to be like you. If you haven’t, please don’t get discouraged. The good thing is, now you know. So whether it’s a New Year resolution or indeed any goal you set for yourself, this will apply. The year may be running to an end, but by God’s grace there will be a 2019, and after a period of self- evaluation-that’s what I’m calling it-you will know where and how to alter your lifestyle in other to ensure more satisfactory results.

Thank you for reading.

On a sidenote, congratulations to Oyinkan B. and Ebube O., last week’s giveaway winners!!!

Photo reference: https://goo.gl/images/uFa34P