Setting Goals During Uncertain Times

A couple weeks ago, I attended a ULead workshop on how to set goals during the pandemic. ULead workshops provide basic coaching services on matters related to running clubs, organization, and personal life coaching. They are super easy to sign up for on CLNx and are available to students who are club executives. However, if you’re not a club executive and are looking for similar workshops, you can check out the Learning to Lead program instead!

The workshop I attended was all about goal setting and reflection during uncertain times. With everything going on in the world right now, it can be easy to feel defeated and like there’s not much point in planning long term. However, trying to stay on track with my life plans and setting goals has helped me look on the bright side about the situation we’re in. 

I thought the ULead workshop was really helpful for teaching me how to focus on things that I can tangibly control during this uncertain time. Today, I wanted to share with you two exercises which I learned.  

1. Grounding yourself in your strength and values 

First, the workshop walked us through an exercise where we wrote down our core strengths and values. We also considered how these strengths and values have changed during the pandemic. Interestingly, I found that my strengths and values hadn’t changed that much, or that they had gotten stronger. From this, we reflected on how these strengths and values can become the basis of our goals and next steps in life, regardless of what is going on in the world around us.

2. Reflect on important experiences 

Second, the workshop asked us to reflect on some important moments in our life that felt influential or world-changing. Instead of just reflecting on them, they asked us to really think about the what, so what, and now what of the moment - what the moment was, what we learned from it, and how we put that moment into actionable steps.

This reflection activity helped me think about moments in my life that I had already experienced which felt influential. For example, I reflected on a time I decided to take a class I thought was hard but really interesting, and did well in it. We then discussed how these memories could translate into tangible goals going forward. From my memory, I decided that a future goal of mine would be to always do what interests and excites me the most, regardless of whether it seems hard or intimidating. I found that reflecting on things that had already happened in my life allowed me to gain momentum and guidance going forward, despite the lack of things going at the moment.

Overall, I definitely recommend checking out a ULead workshop if you’re looking for extra support or encouragement during this hard time of the year! There are a wide variety of workshops that all seem very helpful.