I have been doing a LOT of thinking about my goals. My recent post about not meeting a goal is an excellent reminder to me that when I make goals, I need to be sure they are good goals for me. As I was thinking about what that means, I thought that some of my realizations might be useful to others. This could apply to businesses, weight loss, or whatever it is you are hoping to achieve in your life.

1. Why do you want this? One of the problems with my goal of earning $2000/month selling handmade jewelry is that my reasons for wanting it didn’t really work. I want to make and sell all that jewelry so I can be a stay at home mom and spend more time with my kid? Um…if I’m making and shipping all that jewelry, I’d actually have *less* time to be a good mom. In order to create a more realistic goal, I need to consider whether my motivations make sense. Which brings me to…

2. Does your goal fit in with other goals you have? Mine didn’t – and I found myself struggling between trying to be the best mom I could be while at the same time being the best businesswoman, and a good employee at my part time job. It was too much all at once, and because the business was the easiest thing to slack off on…that’s what always got put on the back burner when things got too busy.

3. What obstacles might come up that you haven’t thought of? Do you have a back-up plan? I didn’t know, when I was writing up my goals, that I’d be having my second child so soon. At the time, I was thinking in terms of growing my business before having another child, so that when that happened, I’d be able to stay home full time afterward. But when it comes to having children, you don’t know how long it will take, and my pregnancy happened really fast. It came with really awful nausea and fatigue in the beginning, and it was all I could do some days to stay awake until my son’s bedtime, much less make time to work on anything for me (like designing jewelry, for instance, or editing photos). I was lucky if I woke up in time to shower before work on the 2 days a week I went to my day job….

4. If you reach your goal, will it make your life better? If your goal is to lose weight, maybe it’s because you have high blood pressure, and by losing a few pounds, you could be healthier. On the other hand, maybe it’s because you think thin people are happier than people who need to lose 10 pounds, which isn’t necessarily true. (I’ve been both the thin person and the one who needs to lose weight, and after 2 pregnancies, I’ve been both women more than once!) I thought that if I could only sell enough jewelry to quit my job, I’d be happy, but as I started selling jewelry more regularly online, it didn’t make my happier. Sure, I’d be happy when I saw that I’d made sales, but doing production work turned out to feel like a chore, and I realized I wasn’t very excited about a sale anymore unless it was a piece that I’d already made. As it turns out, I have certain personality traits, as a creative person, that don’t mesh well with a production business. I’d be better off creating a design and paying someone else to make all the copies, but that is a completely different business model than the one I was using, involving more of a monetary investment than I was prepared to make. If I want to sell a style of earring in my etsy shop, I should make however many pairs or variations of that style as I feel like making at that time – then sell them, and when they run out, remove that item from my shop. Unfortunately, because there is time and work involved in photographing and writing about a piece, that means that some of my bread-and-butter items, which sell for a low price point, are not good pieces for me to be in the business of selling/making. That was a touch conclusion to come to, believe me.

5. If your goal is starting to seem unrealistic, think about what you love or are passionate about. One thing I did was think a lot about things that have been consistent for me throughout my life. Things I do regularly even if nobody pays me to do them. I came up with: making jewelry, writing, taking photographs, reading, listening to music, spending time with people I love, coming up with fun activities to do with my kids, yoga, pilates, trying new crafts. Things that scare me a little but I get a rush when I do them: singing (in front of people, ie karaoke), letting people read my creative writing, trying to make art (as opposed to craft projects), teaching my classes at the gym, teaching jewelry classes, dancing (sober, anyway – I used to dance drunk all the time in college but I’m much more self-conscious now that I rarely have more than a single drink). Here’s another tip: stuff that scares you but gives you a rush is the stuff you probably really want to be doing, all the time if possible. I’m convinced that a lot of people, like me, are a little bit scared of doing certain creative things in front of other people. It’s like artist stage fright. I think that has a lot to do with why so many creative people have substance abuse problems, but that’s a whole other LONG article to write, maybe some other time. For now, if there’s something you love doing after a few drinks but are afraid to do sober….try doing it sober. Trust me, huge rush. The first time I sang karaoke completely sober felt amazing. I’m never going to be a professional singer, but having the guts to sing in front of actual people, without drinking, felt like a major accomplishment to me.

So what did all this thinking tell me about my goals? How did it shape my new goals for my business? First, I need to be doing more of the things I get a rush from. Making art pieces, whether using jewelry as my medium, or photography, or any other medium. The things I do all the time, such as making jewelry and taking pictures, are things I could develop into product lines. The things that scare me a little bit are things I should spend more time working on, to see where it takes me.

Next post in this series: my new goals, and how I’m working on them!