I feel it’s important to always have goals in your life. Even if you never quite achieve them, goals can provide a sense of direction and purpose. You can think of them like a framework or lens through which you can better assess your decisions. Does doing something move you closer or further away from accomplishing your goal(s)? And so, as I look ahead to the rest of 2022, I thought I’d take some time to decide on a few goals for this year.
Maybe they’re just new year’s resolutions, since a couple of these aren’t exactly SMART goals. Semantics are semantics, so I’m just going to call these my 2022 goals. That’ll make them a bit harder to assess at the end of the year, but I think I’m okay with that. I’ve purposefully decided on three goals that address three very different aspects of my life too.
Speak More Cantonese With My Kids
As a kid, I definitely leaned more into the “Canadian” part of my Chinese-Canadian identity. My parents neither encouraged nor discouraged me from doing so, because they ascribed to the model minority myth. I had to “fit in” with my peers, after all. And while I engaged in some Chinese Canadian cultural habits, I never fully embraced that part of who I am. Now that I’m older, I look back with regret.
This is even more important to me now, as Cantonese — the language of Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in China — is effectively a dying language. It’s being actively overtaken by Mandarin, and this puts our specific culture and heritage at risk. Taishanese is almost nonexistent at this point, practically a critically endangered language. Remember that “Chinese” is not some monoculture.
I don’t want my children to lose this part of who they are. My 7-year-old barely speaks any Cantonese at all, and I’m seeing a similar future for the 1-year-old unless we actively try to work against it. So, even though my command of Cantonese is poor to mediocre at best, I’m going to try and use it much more frequently around them. I didn’t speak Cantonese much growing up (only around elders or when ordering in a restaurant), but I hope my kids pick up on more of it and keep it going.
Language is such a huge part of who we are. They’ll know the food for sure. We just need to help preserve the language and culture.
Log Three Million Total Steps in 2022
When I was first thinking about my physical health goals for 2022, I initially thought I may have wanted to go in a different direction with this. In previous years, I set a daily step goal and decided I wanted to hit that step goal 250 times over the course of a calendar year. For 2022, I thought about reframing it such that I just wanted to “be active” in some way every day. That way, even if I don’t hit my step goal, I’d do some chiro exercises or participate in a family dance party.
That sub-goal may linger in the back of my head. However, looking back at my habits and goals in 2021, I’m thinking that instead of using the daily steps as goals unto themselves, I’d reframe it as part of a bigger goal. So, the objective for 2022 is to hit three million total steps. For context, I had about 2.8 million steps in both 2021 and 2020. If I’m more consistent with my daily steps (and make up the difference when I don’t hit the goal), I should be able to break the 3 million threshold in 2022.
Get Comfortable With Letting Go
This is perhaps the most ethereal, qualitative, intangible of my goals for 2022. It’s also one that I’ve been working on, in some form or another, for a great number of years. Remember when I chose “acceptance” as one of my guiding words for 2017? This is a similar version of that. The reality is that I can’t do everything, nor should I expect myself to do everything. By the same accord, not everything is going to work out as great as I hope they will.
And I have to be okay with that. If it’s not working, I should let it go (unless I still enjoy doing it). Following this line of thinking, the idea is to allocate more resources to what is working and discard what isn’t working. Part of this has to do with content creation goals, like this blog, YouTube, Instagram, the podcast, and all the rest of it. But, it’s also true for life in general, personal or professional.
Sometimes, you’ve just got to listen to Elsa and let it go. I’m working on getting the cold not to bother me anyway. Focus on the wins, don’t worry too much about the shortcomings, and be kinder to myself.
What Are Your 2022 Goals and Resolutions?
If nothing else, one thing I learned from my 2021 experience is it’s hard to keep track of too many goals. Accomplishing those goals is hard enough, let alone keeping track of the relevant metrics. That’s part of the reason why I pared down my 2022 goals down to just three and, realistically speaking, only one is actually measurable. So, they’re not totally S.M.A.R.T., and I’m okay with that. (See, I’m already doing goal number three!)
Have you set any new year’s resolutions or goals for 2022? I encourage you to share them in the comments below. That gives you the added benefit for public accountability, right?
The Canto goal is something I’ve been working on in the last couple years, too. It takes time, but we’ll get better at it. I actually stopped with New Years Resolutions thing. A few years ago, I jumped on the bandwagon with that whole 100 goals in a year thing. They weren’t supposed to be big goals or tasks – just little things like doing that one thing we’ve all been putting off for years or going on a walk with someone we know, etc. Small, achievable things that you know you’re likely to do. Many years later, I’m only slightly over 50% finished with that list. But I did learn something: Goals change as we grow. My 100 goals list has gone through many revisions as my interests grew and waned. And I discovered there are things that I thought were important to accomplish, turned out to be rather unimportant. I think people who never attempt to set goals for themselves will never experience little life discoveries like this. Add oil!
Thanks for sharing these. While my grandparents’ native language (Polish) is far from dying out, I’ve tried to learn it. I can remember my grandparents and their brothers/sister/cousins all speaking Polish when they got together. My parents’ generation understood it, but didn’t speak it (assimilation in their own way, I guess.) And I wouldn’t know a word of it (other than food-related words) unless I learned it on Duolingo. It’s a good goal to have!
My goas are definitely far from being S.M.A.R.T. goals, except for one. I want to get healthier (which for me is more a feeling than a number at this point), I want to spend more time NOT staring at my computer, mostly meaning spending face to face time with my family and lots of time outdoors. And my final one is that I want to publish at least one novel, after not publishing anything last year.
Good luck with all of yours. You’ve got this!
I agree with the healthier in a not-a-number kind of way. I want to keep up with the kids without feeling exhausted all the time. Or to survive a hike without feeling like I’m about to die. I’ve been trying to cut my screen time too, to varying degrees of success.