While visiting my hometown for the holidays, I ran into the parents of my childhood best friend. The two of us went to the same tiny neighborhood daycare from infancy and didn’t lose touch until years later.

Via the miracle of Facebook, we reconnected not long ago and I discovered she’s a teacher, is now married and just recently had a baby. The more I thought about her and the wonderful things happening in her life, I began to think about how different our timelines had turned out, That only got me thinking further about my entire group of friends, our individual goals and what a difference a year makes.

Tis’ the season for making New Year’s resolutions and setting goals after all.

It’s healthy to have goals throughout your life; whether those goals are about your education,  career or family. However, I know too many people (mostly women) who set unrealistic goals, not just for the coming year, but for their lives.

For example, setting a goal of being engaged and then subsequently married by a certain age. That goal depends so heavily on someone else that I don’t know how these women come to the conclusion that this is a wise bet. What if your goal is to be engaged by age 26, and you discover -- at age 25 -- that the person you’ve been dating for three years isn’t the one for you? What do you do, stay with the guy because you’d rather marry some idiot than face the possibility of not reaching your goal? Well, I hope your next goal was ‘divorced by 27,’ because that’s exactly where that kind of thinking will get you.

How about the goal of having children before you’re 30? 

Now you’re challenging Mother Nature … good luck. Newsflash: Not everyone that decides they want a child instantly becomes pregnant on the first try, the first six months, the first year or dare I say it … ever. Unlike one-hour dry cleaning or Tivo, our bodies aren’t that reliable.

 Being a woman, I understand this goal to some degree. So much of our society pushes us to believe that if we cannot procreate we are ‘less than.’ It’s not only completely callous, but also untrue.

Unlike men, female bodies don’t have the same shelf life, but that doesn’t mean you need to start setting unrealistic goals for yourself when you have no control over the end result. That’s a one-way ticket to disappointment. 

In the past three years, a lot of Americans have had to face facts that their career goals may not be met in the time-line they’d hoped. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and many people, through no fault of their own, have had to make drastic changes to their career-based ambitions. Going for that VP promotion is a great goal. Going for that VP promotion when you work in the mailroom … maybe a bit lofty, but perhaps still a great long-term goal. After all, this kind of thinking got National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell where he is today. There’s nothing like a recession to throw a curve ball into your job, your career and even, for some, retirement.

I’m all for goals. Goals motivate us, give us something to work for and force us to think about the future. However, goals need to be realistic. Not in the sense that you cannot dream or strive for what may seem unlikely, but we all seem so set on getting what we want right now that we forget to think about if these decisions, actions and goals are right for us.

Having a Plan B doesn’t imply that you aren’t wholeheartedly following your dreams, but rather that you are preparing a safer place to land in the event that Plan A doesn’t work out.

People change, the economy changes, circumstances change. These facts aren’t always the easiest to swallow when they mess with your life, but being able to adapt to the unavoidable changes that come your way does make it easier to recover and move on.

So as you’re coming down from your holiday stress and the New Year arrives, make some goals for the coming year or even the next five years. Dream big and set goals based on you and your life; the life you are living right now.