You may remember my post last year about my scheme to motivate myself during 2024 via a bingo board of goals and challenges (https://50shadesofbrave.blog/2024/11/19/my-2024-bingo-challenge/). It was an activity that led to plenty of action and a degree of reflection, so I decided to repeat it for 2025. If you’re looking for a TL:DR for this post, it is that I won’t be repeating it in 2026, and if you’re interested in the why, read on …
First of all, I decided to create two boards, one for fitness goals and one for general goals. This was bad idea #1 (although I couldn’t have known it at the time). Unfortunately, family circumstances meant that from April onwards, my PT had to step back from coaching and this definitely scuppered me somewhat. Added to this, my ongoing hip issues (gluteal tendinopathy & bursitis) and the (unsuccessful) attempts to treat it have also meant that I have not been able to be as active as I had planned this year. My fitness bingo board was therefore consigned to the bin in about September…
Secondly, I decided to increase the number of squares on the general bingo board from 30 to 36. I also decided to be very specific (quantitative rather than qualitative) about the goals. These turned out to be bad ideas #2 and #3. The vagaries of goals like ‘do something kind / helpful / positive’ were replaced by such exigences as ‘reach X weight’, ‘prepare Y flute pieces’ and ‘add Z pages to scrapbook album’. These are clearly black or white successes or failures rather than being open to interpretation, and I found that this added a displeasing degree of pressure to the whole thing. For this reason, the general board, too, was removed from my eye-line in about October.
My pre-Christmas tidy of my desk uncovered the offending ‘general’ board, and led me to write this blog today – thereby checking off ‘write the equivalent of one blog a month’ (so 12 in total). Looking at the board, I can see two completed horizontal lines / one completed vertical line, and a total of 30 of the 36 squares checked off. Last year, that would have been the whole board… but naturally, this year my focus is drawn to the squares I didn’t check off…
- Although I added in excess of 10 pages to each of my kids’ childhood photo albums, I “failed” to add 10 pages to the holiday album…
- Although I had a dedicated ‘fitness’ bingo board, and although I completed the BigMoose 5k charity run in April, doing a parkrun and a 5+ mile walk still made it onto the general board and I “failed” to complete either…
- I also “failed” to gain a qualification – mainly because I decided that I would have been doing it more in service of checking off the square than for the joy of studying; “failed” to speak at an event – although I am delivering live training in the first week of January, so that’s an ‘almost there’; and totally “failed” to engage with my flute very much at all this year … which is an abject lesson in how best to motivate myself (and it’s not by setting high level goals for an activity with which I have an already complicated relationship!!)
I guess not completing the board has allowed me to observe how hard I can be on myself regarding the achievement / non-achievement of goals, and how important the articulation of my goals actually is to my engagement with them. I have also learned that, in the words of a dear friend and excellent coach, I’M IN CHARGE of my year / my goals /my surroundings etc, and as such, I can decide to change / abandon / ignore the board of goals that I created if it is no longer lighting my fire! Rest assured that 2026 will be a time for something different… I’m just not sure what yet…
50shadesofbrave 