This Is Not a New Year’s Resolution

Happy 2013!

With a new year come new aspirations, new bucket list items, new hopes, new dreams. I won’t use the word resolution, because we all know what tends to happen with those!  However, knowing about the importance of goal-setting and focus, I’m looking forward to the new challenges in store for me in the coming year.

Setting Goals

Jump hurdles, cross the finish line and meet your goal!
photo credit

There’s a theory that goal setting means creating a plan for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-targeted (or SMART) results. Doing this affects performance by stimulating focus, effort, persistence, and cognition.

Simply put, setting goals make you concentrate on what’s important, learn, and execute the necessary actions to accomplish something. Knowing what you want gives way to learning what to do to make it happen, which facilitates MAKING IT HAPPEN.

Your commitment to natural hair (or anything else in life) doesn’t have to mean setting things in stone. It’s a good idea to think about what the end of the journey will bring you, to help you target more relevant information and fine-tune your regimen and practices. You’ll set goals today that you will reach and then you will set new goals. Or you may think you want to work toward one thing, and then learn things that will result in re-evaluating and resetting your goals. The journey may never come to an end.

So what’s my goal? What am I trying to accomplish? Good question…

Actually, I have two goals.

First, my goal here in cyberspace is to document what I’m going through, how I feel, what I know, and maybe even what I don’t know about natural hair — and possibly some other stuff from time to time. This is with the hope that I can connect with others out there who might be feeling the same way I have, who might be able to learn from me, or who can help me in my learning.

Second, a goal for my hair itself. My journey ends with longer hair. That’s it, plain and simple. However, I’ve come to realize that while the journey ends there, it will take about a zillion steps to cross that finish line. Long hair as a goal may be a bit too broad. Although I’ve already been a natural for some time, I’m wiping the slate clean today.

So let’s revise:

I need to improve my hair’s overall health. I can really zero in on increasing retention and minimizing breakage as an immediate goal. By adopting appropriate hair care habits, as well as finding products that maintain my hair’s health, I will be leaps and bounds closer to achieving my goal. That takes care of SPECIFIC, ACHIEVABLE, and REALISTIC. My timeline will be three months. TIME-TARGET is now set. At then end of that time, I’ll reevaluate to see how much hair I’ve managed to retain and whether my shedding has decreased. MEASURABLE progress/results… check!

Pretty SMART, if I do say so myself…

What are your natural-hair goals? Have they changed since you started your journey?