Realistic goals for 2021, aka “Year TWO of Pandemic Life”

So we are one month into 2021 and I think it’s safe to say that we need to gauge our expectations of ourselves accordingly… While it would be easy to get overzealous and set a bunch of goals for this year, maybe that’s not the best plan forward. Of course we want to make plans that help us achieve our goals as well as bring back some semblance of normalcy to our lives but, I hate to say it, we are still in a pandemic.

I repeat…we are still in a pandemic and honestly, many of us are still very impacted by the events of the past year because they have not stopped… Kids are still home, virtual learning and working is still the plan, many of us are not vaccinated or seeing our social networks, and most of us are still desperately stressed, lonely, restless, etc. This means that we are likely not our best selves and I would advocate that any goals need to be ones that help you manage stress and take care of yourself better. Not to get things back to normal necessarily because that is just not possible right now. Even though we all still crave that path.

Let’s start a bit smaller with some achievable goals first as we ease into the year. Maybe it is taking 5-10 minutes to meditate, walk, do yoga, read a book for fun, watch a show, laugh with your kids and forget about online learning. It could just be making an effort to be kinder to yourself and your family. Letting things go a bit more so that it feels less stressful. Whatever it is, let’s not overwhelm ourselves and overextend ourselves… That would just be overwhelming and disappointing when we come to the inevitable conclusion that we really can’t take on much still. While that is frustrating for so many of us, it can also be liberating to just focus on what we can control.

So, while it is perfectly understandable to want to set goals in 2021 like it is any other year, it’s not. And something to watch out for is that even if things with the pandemic improve – we might still struggle for a bit. Keep in mind that everything we have been feeling is cumulative and when we are out of this crisis, there is likely going to be a surge of feelings about the situation we just endured. The best thing is to set goals to help you endure as best you can and then remember that we will need to process what we just experienced collectively and individually later.