Setting Goals

As legal professionals (and everyone else, for that matter) start to look towards 2025, many people are beginning to set their goals for the new year. Goal setting is important in a professional sense, of course, but it can also be valuable when it comes to managing your mental health. However, knowing how to set goals is also important.

For starters, goals should be what are known as SMART goals, meaning they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Of course, you can have larger, over-arching goals, such as losing weight or being more productive at work, but specific goal setting should be made using the SMART goals that in turn can feed into those broader more general goals. For example, if your broad goal is to lose weight, a specific SMART goal would be to workout three times a week between now and March, or to eat two salads a week instead of getting takeout. 

Another problem that people sometimes have when it comes to goal setting is that they try to compare themselves to others when they set their goals. As we’ve said before, life doesn’t have to be a race. You don’t have to set your goal to be better than anyone else if doing so is creating too much anxiety for you to manage. 

So as you go about setting professional goals, don’t be afraid to set personal goals that could help you manage your mental health. These goals could include starting or increasing your meditation practice, getting more sleep, making an appointment for peer support or therapy (or both), or being better about having a work-life balance (of course, these are general, your specific ones should be SMART goals that make sense for your situation). And if you are having trouble setting goals, know that you can always reach out to us here at The LegalMind Society for support. We know what it is like to be there and to be struggling with personal and professional goals and our goal is to help support you.