Ask Five Questions Before Setting Goals for 2025

by | Dec 22, 2024 | Uncategorized

This is generally the time of year when people set goals for the next year. I do this. I’ve learned over the years that it’s best to set my goals in terms of my behavior (what will I do, with God’s grace) rather than results, as I don’t control the results of other people’s behavior. Dan Rockwell shares five questions we should ask ourselves before setting goals for 2025. It gets us thinking which is always a good thing.

Guest Post by Dan Rockwell

Four things make you unique.  Personal goals make sense when they express and extend your experiences, values, aspirations, and talents. You could add DNA to the list but you don’t influence that. This post focuses on talents.

Ask, “How can I express or extend my talents?” before setting personal goals for 2025.

Gallup says talents are natural patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. They are abilities that feel like second nature to you.

Strengths express talents you have developed. For example, learning conflict resolution techniques when empathy comes naturally to you is a developed talent.

5 questions before setting personal goals for 2025:

Complete this entire exercise in less than 10 minutes.

  1. What can you do easily that causes you to wonder why others find it difficult?
  2. What do you see that others frequently miss?
  3. What roles or responsibilities feel most like play?
  4. What do you consistently do better than others?
  5. What is true of you that causes people to seek your advice or perspective?

Click here to download the complete list of 17 questions.

Explore:

Write a few sentences in response to the following.

  1. The talents I would love to express or extend in 2025 are ….
  2. I could express or extend my talents in new ways by ….
  3. What personal goals come to mind?

Come back to these questions once a day until you are comfortable with your responses.

Next level:

If you’re comfortable, share your reflections with trusted friends or colleagues. Ask them to complete the following sentence.

You could express or extend your talents in 2025 by ….

This post is written in the same spirit as our book, “The Vagrant: The Inner Journey of Leadership.” Purchase it on Amazon.