In this Harvard Business Review article, author and time management coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders suggests that if you take a more self-compassionate approach to setting personal and professional goals, you will be more likely to achieve them. Self-compassion “self-compassion could be the difference between giving up on your goals (or avoiding them completely) and achieving them step by step.”
She recommends the following goal-setting strategies:
- Drop words with baggage (like “diet”)
- Decide what you will do, rather than what you will stop doing (ex: what you should/will eat rather than what foods you will cut out)
- Celebrate progress by setting goals in milestone steps toward a big result, rather than one large hard-to-achieve goal
- Embrace the process. If-then statements are powerful in this way (“if I get off track, then I will ____”)
Interested in learning more about self-compassion? Check out this very good HBR article, “Be Kinder to Yourself” by Alice Boyes, author of the “5 mistakes we make when we’re overwhelmed” article we shared last week.
How do you practice self-compassion?------------------------------
Penny Schnarrs
Virtual Communities Program Manager
Association of American Medical Colleges
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