New Year, New Goals

I’ve always been a goal oriented person. When I was younger we would do this ritual on December 31, where everyone would light a candle and say 3-4 things that they were thankful for that they accomplished in the year, their goals for the upcoming year, and an intention.

As I got older and left the cult I stopped ringing in the new year this way but would always have a diary that I would write down my new goals for the year. I loved the idea of a fresh new start. A new book with fresh pages that I would fill with all my hopes and dreams in the next year.

I would usually only get midway into the year before I fizzled out and over the years I collected half filled out diary’s. As time went on this habit faded away and by the time I had kids, I told myself I didn’t have time to be writing in my diary or setting goals that I never accomplished anyway.

The years passed and I aimless wandered through the years. Each one blending into the other, never feeling like I accomplished much. How could I? I had nothing to measure my success too.

Then I got the job that I have now. In the first 3 months of working there, we had to write out professional and personal goals that we had to share with our manager and CEO. While writing those goals, something in my memory jogged. Even though I hadn’t written my goals in years, I realized that I subconsciously had set goals for myself and slowly I was accomplishing them.

I started to get back into writing out my goals at the beginning of every year. I never really had a system for my goals until I started on my self development journey, and every book I read had some information on how they set their goals and the system they used.

Last year, I watched a video by an AI developer at Amazon explain how she did her goals every year and a thought popped into my head. What if I created my own systemize way of doing my goals every year. What would that look like or me and what would that be.

On the last week of December, I sat down and took a little bit of goal setting from all my favorite self help gurus and the AI developer and created a strategy for how I set my goals.

STEP 1: Goals

I got a big sheet of paper, the kind that’s almost like card stock and some markers or pens that won’t smudge on the paper cardstock.

I wrote “Goals for 2021” at the top and then I started writing all the goals that I could think of all over the paper, in no specific order or method. Just a full on brain dump of everything I could think of.

When I couldn’t think of anymore, I left the paper and pens at my desk. For the next two weeks, whenever any goals popped in my head I would write them down and add them to the list.

STEP 2: Values and intentions

When I felt like I had put down all the goals that I could think of, I scheduled a time to sit down for an hour or so to do the next step.

Write down my values and intentions.

I had gotten the list of values from reading Benjamin Franklins biography. He 13 values that he would look at and practice everyday. I loved that and it resonated with me greatly.

I had values like be grateful, be patient, kind, etc….13 of them total.

Once I had that I moved on to my intentions for the year.

The Merriam Webster dictionary describes the essential meaning of an intention as “the thing that you plan to do or achieve : an aim or purpose”.

So with that in mind I listed 3-4 that were going to be my intentions for the year. In every decision I was going to make in the year, it had to line up with my values and my intentions.

STEP 3: Categories of your life

Now there are so many self development gurus who will talk about this but my two absolute favorites are the “Wheel of Life” by Tony Robins and “Categories of your life” by Susan Jefferson . She talks about this in her book “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyways”. Great book.

Basically, in your life, you have different categories and you are never doing all the categories at the same time. You have your career, your family, your spiritual life, your personal life, your contribution, health and fitness, etc. Whatever the categories are they are personal to you.

But the goal is to define 6-7 categories of your life that are important to you and in each category of your life you are going to have goals that you focus on.

Example, if one of my catergories is my family and one of my goals is to spend quality time with my kids, when I’m home from work and have free time with my family my focus will be to ensure that the time we spend together will be “quality time” and I’m going to have a clear definition in my mind what quality is. Under my career category I will have other goals and when I am work and focusing on my career I will be focusing on my goals for my work.

The idea is that you are able to break down your goals so they aren’t just one big list of things you have to accomplish and so that when you are focused on that category or area of your life, you have what you will focus on and your goals for that category. Additionally some areas you will do well in and you will need to focus more on another category to improve that area of your life and create a balance or a “wheel” that runs smoothly.

STEP 4: Outcome

After I have typed out my categories of life, I’ll copy all the goals from my big sheet of paper and list them under the category of life that they fall under. After that I’m going to list what my outcome for each of my goals are.

Some of the goals might have the same outcome so I’ll list all those goals under one outcome.

Example:

Category: Health and Fitness

Outcome: To build physical and mental strength

Goal: 50 push ups in a row

Meditate everyday for 20 minutes

Outcome: To look and feel healthy and beautiful

Goal: Get a facial treatment once a quarter

Take my vitamins everyday

The idea behind it is that when the going get toughs and you don’t feel like doing the things that will help you reach your goals, you remember why you are doing it. The why should be strong enough to pull you forward. Something that you really want and that will really motivate you to do the things that you need too.

If my goal is to spend quality time with my kids, I want to make sure that I know what my outcome is for that quality time that I’m going to spend with my kids. I want to define all the reasons why I want to take an hour out of my day to put my phone down and focus on them. So that if I come home after a long day of work and I don’t feel like it, the why is going to motivate me to do.

The why has to be strong and it has to mean something to you personally.

STEP 5: Action

Now that you have your categories, your outcomes, and your goals. Under each category you will list your top 3 goals first and under each goal you will list 3 actions that you can take to move one step closer to that goal. These can be big actions or little actions, just list 3. You can list more if you think of them in the moment but don’t stress, as the idea is to break it down into a micro goals so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by everything that you need to do.

And that’s it!

Now when I come into the new year I have a list of categories, goals, outcomes, action teams, values, and intentions that I’m going to print out and post on my bathroom wall. And of course I’m going to get started on my first action items. 🙂

Mid year I’ll review everything I have and take off or add or adjust any goals that I’ve made so that I can make sure I am still on target for all the things that I want and I’m firmly on the path of creating the life that I’ve always dreamed.

This year I was able to do it in December, so I’ve come into January with a list of things that I’m already trying to do and accomplish. It’s going to be a busy year and we are off to a really busy start but I’m excited to continue to design the life I’ve always dreamed and to do it more effectively then I have ever done it before.

Happy goal setting!!! And happy new year!

A.A.