My New Year's Goals Have Been All Wrong! How About Yours?
My New Year’s Goals Are All Wrong! How About Yours?
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Are you living on autopilot with a series of habits in a mundane life that does not represent what you want? Do your days bleed one into the next with little joy and excitement? If you’re living a life that is simply “fine” as Mel Robbins puts it in her Tedx presentation, let’s dive in and see if we can add in the goals and actionable steps to make your focus personally transformative.
In my last post, I talked about the process of creating goals and determining process to realize them. I shared my working list of goals for 2021 to give you an idea of how you could organize your list.
However, as I reviewed my goals, I was shocked to see that none of them involved personal development! As I considered what was missing, I chatted over the list with my daughter Alexandra. I determined it makes sense I put business goals top of mind because they are the most heady and exciting ones for me. The potential for possibilities is the secret sauce of owning a business.
However, personal goals are important, too, because all things come from you. How you view the world, interact with others and even deal with success and failure all stem from how you inhabit you.
Wherever you go you carry your baggage.
I’m often reminded of the quote: “No matter where you go there you are.” We all tote our baggage wherever we go. Do you suffer from a dose of not finding yourself as interesting or worthy compared to others? I know this can be an issue for me, and it all stems from not doing the work of digging in to know you and care for you as you deserve.
Many of us are good at taking in the pleasures and gratifications of enjoyment, but the practice of being mindful and self-aware can seem a slog. Where is the diversion from one’s self in that kind of focus?
Just remember: Your life, your purpose all stem from how you deal with being in your own headspace.
KEEPING YOUR BEST SELF UPFRONT
I began this post after realizing that I made this HUGE omission of planning my goals for the new year with self-improvement at the top. I believe in the power of setting goals, but if you don’t tend to caring for you first, you miss appreciating the outcomes of other aspirations.
As I thought about how to bring my best self to my business, I realized I wasn’t even considering the kinds of qualities I want to foster in my day-to-day life. For example, I’m all about listening to clients, but in my intimate family and friend relationships I don’t bring my best listening skills to the table.
Of course, we can’t be our best all the time, but I want to include my better tendencies to those who matter most instead of saving it all for work. You live a lot of life outside of what you do for a business or a job, shouldn’t those you most value gain from your positive qualities, too?
KEEP YOUR PERSONAL GOALS TOP OF MIND
I give a nod to Alli over at Scattered Squirrel for her post, “How to use your planner to actually achieve your goals.” In the past, my goals have often been created and then sat unattended most of the year. Alli suggests periodic reviews and scheduling the actionable items toward the goals daily, weekly and monthly in a way that helps you keep the goals top of mind.
Wellbeing needs to be at the tippy top of those lists. I’ve taken Alli’s idea of keeping goals prominent by rearranging my own into categories with business as one area, personal as another, and home as the third.
I talked to my daughter Alexandra about her goals and she provided a quick chart she made, into which I retooled my goals adjacent to pinpoints of “actionables” in the other column. Now those are printed and pasted into my new journal for 2021.
Working up my personal goals with goals on the left and actionables on the right.
In my last post my goals were all mixed and I had NO well-being goals at all. Now they are separate, and my plan is to start each day with some mindful personal actions, specifically ones that break with my existing morning routine.
BREAK ROUTINE
How do you start your day? Do you get up, maybe hit the snooze button a time or two, and then traipses off for breakfast to watch a bit of news? Whatever you do, I’m sure it’s roughly the same every day.
Our brain prefers patterns because it requires less energy. I’ve described this in a post on habits you can find here, along with how to incorporate mini habits to displace less desired ones. Our brains resist deviation from ritual because it costs us mental energy. But if we force the exertion, we gain something. And that something is usually a bright-eyed view of the world through a totally new lens.
I’ve decided the only way that the shifts I want will happen is if I make breaking my morning routine the first thing I do each day. (Ironically, it will be a routine to BREAK routine.) And what’s most exciting about this is that it can be something small and seemingly inconsequential, and oftentimes even enjoyable!
I’ve given this idea a trial run the last couple of days and started to generate a list of other new actions I can start my days with. You can give the idea a try with the sampling of ideas here:
Sing a song
Learn a phrase from a different language
Sit quietly and listen to a beautiful piece of music
Sit quietly and breathe
Light a candle and gaze at it for a few minutes
Sit outside and just listen
Walk outside
Stretch your muscles and back.
Dance to a piece of peppy music
Write yourself a note. If you were your best friend how would you greet you today?
Now, what do you get from these quiet moments of self-care? A greater sense of mindfulness, where self-awareness comes into focus and you can bring body, mind and spirit into sync. Perhaps that will mean less eating when you’re actually full, or better posture, or a simple change of scenery.
THE POINT OF MINDFULLNESS
The goal to have more moments of mindfulness, is to bring you a positive sense of wellbeing in the moment. By jostling your brain with a break in routine, you displace habitual thought with something fresh to consider. It’s like a message of “Wake up, and pay attention to your life!”
The next time you are in a “typical” bit of your life, one you’d normally disregard to consider at all, take a step back and take it in with fresh eyes. Seeing the new in the “usual” is one more way of breaking habitual thoughts and discovering in the smallest marvels how un-routine-ish your life really is.
GOAL #1 IS TAKE STOCK OF YOU AND YOUR CARE
Earlier this year I fell into a slump feeling bored with life. I looked at the feeds of others on social media and thought how dull my life was by comparison. I then tried a little experiment.
My test started with actively thinking and chatting with those closest about how engaging little bits of my life were, and strangely the feeling flourished into feeling better overall. Your life is your first priority, and feeling good about it is vital to how you navigate the time you have.
I nearly lost sight of that truth yet again when creating my goals this year, but have since corrected it. I say that if you’re creating purposeful goals, you need to tend first to your personal wellbeing and improvement. Start small by breaking with morning routines to do something that slows you down to appreciate a detail of your existence.
If you want to share your goals and receive a bit of encouragement in your snail mailbox, I’m here and ready to drop you a note. Get the details on getting your encouragement here.
Cover photo credit: Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
Postscript: One comfort is a clean space. If you need help getting going on organizing your home check out Get Organized Gal’s courses for support.
I used her course to organize my office, and it is in pretty good shape these days. Success in one space has lead to cleaning channels to other rooms and photos as well. Check out he courses here.
Sherry and Alexandra Borzo together in Lima, Peru
Sherry is the founder of Storied Gifts a personal publishing service of family and company histories. She and her team help clients curate and craft their stories into books. When not writing or interviewing, Sherry spends loads of time with her grandchildren and lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
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