It’s a new year!

Welcome to 2016!  It’s a new year so it’s time for annual goal setting! 

This is a much loved (and hated) annual tradition in which we try to make plans for the year.  If we are just playing along because everyone around us is making goals (or resolutions) then we have no intention of meeting those goals.  But if we actually want to make progress, then this is one of the most important parts of the year - when we set out to define what we are going to do all year with respect to our harp playing.

However, we don’t actually want to start with identifying our goals.

WHAT??

Yup, you heard me, we don’t want to start there.  We have a much more important place to start – last year.

What were your goals for last year?  How did you do? If you did really well and met your goals, how did you do that?  What tools, techniques or strategies did you employ that worked for you? 

Didn’t get where you had originally thought you’d like to? Why not? What happened?  What didn’t work?  Why didn’t it work for you?

There are some common reasons goals don’t get met – did any of these apply to you:

• You didn’t really define a goal (for instance, was your goal something like: “I want to play better”?)
• You bit off too much goal for the time frame (for instance, are you a first year harper with the goal, “I’d like to play Carolan’s Concerto at tempo by the end of the year”?)
• You didn’t keep the rest of your life in mind (for instance, was your goal “I will practice every day from 6 – 7” without recalling that that is dinner/homework/family reconnect time so you were never going to get to practice then?)
• You didn’t write your goals down and by March you couldn’t remember what you had thought was so important in the first place (for instance, was your goal “I will practice scales every day for 30 minutes” but by April it had become “I’ll be glad to sit at my harp for 5 minutes any day this week”?)

There’s a lot to be learned from last year, so review 2015 and glean the nuggets that will help you develop better goals for 2016 and we’ll work on whipping those goals into shape later this month!