As we enter the final weeks of the year, many people take time to dream about the upcoming year and to set goals and resolutions.
Many people find this practice of goal-setting helpful, as it helps them take intentional actions to improve the areas of life important to them in the new year, rather than live life on autopilot.
Not only is goal-setting helpful in this way, but it is also an essential practice for building resilience.
This article will briefly review Tria Corda Ministry’s model of resilience and the importance of goal-setting for resilience, and provide some helpful resources and reflection questions for your own goal-setting.
This page may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support of Tria Corda Ministry!
A Brief Review of the Tria Corda Ministry Model of Resilience
Resilience is an important ability that helps people heal after trauma, handle stress well, and thrive even when facing adversity.
Here at Tria Corda Ministry, we believe that the following categories of activities and practices help you to improve your resilience:
- Mental Health: Seeking to know the truth and find healing from the lies we have come to believe
- Physical Health: Caring for your body and investing in your community
- Spiritual Health: Regular prayer and reception of the sacraments
- Virtue: Seeking to grow in virtue through intentional effort and fasting
- Vocation: Investing in your various callings from God, including your state-in-life vocation, a potential career, and other pursuits
The Importance of Setting Goals for Resilience
How does goal-setting fit into this?
First, having goals and working towards them has been found to improve resilience (e.g., The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People). Goals give people a sense of purpose, even in the midst of stress and trauma, and help people to create a great life.
Additionally, we can use goals to help you build habits in each area of resilience-building activities. For example, you might set a goal of creating a habitual prayer practice, which would improve your spiritual health and resilience.
So, how do we set goals?
How to Set Goals
I am a firm believer that there is no one right way to set goals. We all have different things that motivate us, different life circumstances, and different ways that we prefer to organize our lives, so different goal-setting methods will work for different people.
Below, I am providing a list of books and resources that have helped me to set goals. I recommend picking up one that interests you and applying the lessons you learn.
- Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt: This book provides helpful tips for evaluating your past year, setting goals for the new year, and putting them into action on a quarterly, weekly, or daily basis.
- Helpful Lessons Learned: This book taught me the importance of limiting your goals and evaluating your previous year.
- The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly: In this book, Kelly discusses essential practices for living a joyful, fulfilling life.
- Helpful Lessons Learned: One practice Matthew Kelly suggests is keeping a dream journal, where you write down things you want to do, ideas you have, etc., which can be a great list to draw on when setting your goals.
- The 12-Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington: The authors believe people should set quarterly goals rather than yearly ones to improve focus on their goals.
- Helpful Lessons Learned: I still like having yearly goals, but breaking them down into quarterly focuses helps my motivation.
- Living Forward by Daniel Harkavy and Michael Hyatt: This book walks you through the process of creating a Life Plan. A Life Plan includes things like how you want people to remember you after you die, visions for your different areas of life, and steps to take to improve them.
- Helpful Lessons Learned: This practice helps me focus on what really matters in my life and keep in mind that one day I will die.
As I said above, I recommend picking up a book or two that resonates with you and pulling out lessons for your own goal-setting. It may take some time and experimentation to find the goal-setting practice that works best for you, but the effort into creating that routine will reap wonders for your resilience.
A Special Note: Involve God in your goal-setting process, and continue to involve Him throughout the year. He may ask you to change things mid-year, and life may look much different than you imagined. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you and be willing to change if needed.
How to Create Goals to Improve Your Resilience
Below, I’ll provide an outline for reflecting on your resilience and creating goals to improve it this year.
Step 1: Consider each area of resilience-building activities listed above, and rate how you are doing in each area on a scale of 1 to 10.
Step 2: Consider any habits that you already have in each area. Do you feel that they are still helpful in your current life circumstances? Could you do them better?
Step 3: Brainstorm any habits or projects that may help you to improve in these areas, especially in your lower-scoring areas.
- For example, you may want to start therapy or mentorship, build a Scripture reading habit, build an exercise habit, improve your relationships, start a prayer habit, grow in a particular virtue, find a new job, or start a new hobby.
Step 4: Take that list into prayer and consider which ones God is inviting you to act on this year. From there, create your yearly goals for improving in your areas of resilience-building activities.
Conclusion
Goal-setting is a crucial practice for both your overall resilience and for incorporating resilience-building activities into your life.
As we reach the end of this year, I encourage you to decide on your goal-setting practice and take some time to pray about how God wants you to grow in resilience this year.