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Goal Setting for the New Year

It’s that time of year again. Time to do some goal setting for the new year. Are you ready to crush your goals in 2023?

set up goals Goal Setting for the new year

Goal Setting for 2023: Why even both setting goals?

Before we begin to set goals, we must understand why we should even set up goals for the year.

Here are some reasons why:

  • You can’t hit a target if you don’t aim
  • Setting goals helps you know yourself and trust yourself
  • Sets a good example to those around you
  • Helps you work on your personal development

Related: How to Reflect on the Past Year to Get Ready for 2022

Where to Start?

You may be thinking, where do I even begin to start coming up with goals. Well, first we must talk about the different categories, or areas, in our life. Most people have roughly 8-12 important areas of life. Some examples are:

  • Spirituality
  • Family & Friends / Relationships
  • Career
  • Health and Fitness
  • Learning/Education
  • Entertainment/Fun/Adventure
  • Finances
  • Physical Environment
  • Personal Development
  • Hobbies

Now that you understand this concept, pick 3-5 areas you want to focus on this year and come up with a goal for each one. You could come up with a goal for all of your categories if you want but that can become overwhelming. However, if you wanna make more, do it! I’m not your mom. You’re in charge!

Now for example, for my health and fitness category last year, I made a goal to run my first marathon by the end of 2022.

Your goals can be huge like mine or small like ‘want to develop a morning routine’. Depending on how big or small your goals are should help you decide how many you want to set.

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How to Make Your Goals Stick

Many people make these New Year’s Resolutions or goals for the year but stop focusing on them altogether by the end of January or February. How do we avoid this happening to us?

Here are a few things you can try:

1. What is your why?

Take some time to journal why you want to achieve the goal. You are more motivated to achieve your goals if you have an actual reason behind it.

2. Set up mini goals

Set up some mini-goals within your big year goal. With those mini-goals set-up dates for when you want to achieve them. Try to shoot for one mini goal for each quarter of the year.

For example, with my run a marathon goal, I set up mini-goals of being able to run a 5k by the end of the first quarter, a 10k by the end of the second quarter, and so on.

Sounds like a lot but this helps you make your goals smaller and less intimidating so you’re less likely to drop the big 2023 goals all together in the first few months.

3. Create some new habits

Create daily, weekly, or monthly habits that will help you stay focused on your goals. If you want to write a book, make a habit to write for 30 minutes a day every day or every other day. Or if you want to build a better relationship with a family member, make a habit to call them once a week or every other week. It’s all up to you, but building a habit will help guide you along your path to achieving your goal.

Make a Vision Board

Being able to visualize you completing your goal can help you stay motivated. Also if you look at your goals every day, you won’t forget about them.

Now that you have your goals set, find images, and create a vision board. You can collect images from magazines, old books, or print some online. Find images that best relate to your goal. If you’re saving for a car, find an image of the car you want, or if you want to workout more, find a picture of a gym or workout equipment. Anything that’s related to your goal.

Add some motivational quotes to finish it off. A few words of encouragement to read every day can never hurt. It can even be simple expressions like “You’ve got this!” or “Just do it!”

Finally, put your vision board where you’ll see it every day. For example, hang it above your desk or put it on the fridge. If you’re more digital, make a vision board as the background of your desktop, or your phone background.

*I use Canva to make my digital vision board that’s on my desktop.

vision board | Goal Setting

Final Thoughts on Goals

Making goals for the year can help you get excited thinking about what is possible in your near future. It’s a time to challenge yourself to try something you have always wanted to. Your goals can be big or small. It’s all about doing things to better yourself, and nothing is too small for that.

Recently I’ve heard this expression a lot, “The journey is more rewarding than the goal.” Make sure you don’t get too down on yourself if you fall behind on your goal. You’re already growing and learning a lot just by starting the journey toward your goal.

Are you serious about actually reaching your New Year’s Resolution this year? Join us for the Love Your Goals Workshop and make a plan to crush your goals in 2023.

love your goals workshop | Goal Setting for the New Year

What goals have you set up in 2023? I’d love to hear about them! Tell me in the comments below.

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Goal Setting for the new year

Related blog posts:

Monthly Reflection

New Habits to Start this Year

Personal Development Books to Read in 2023

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How to Do a Monthly Reflection | 15 Questions to Ask Yourself

how to do a monthly reflection

It’s almost the end of the month so it’s time for a monthly reflection. News flash, the beginning of a new year is not the only time you can set goals for yourself. In fact, you should be reviewing those big yearly goals every month.

By doing a monthly reflection each month, you can observe your personal growth and development on a smaller scale and adjust it to fit your lifestyle as you grow throughout the year.

I started doing a monthly reflection about 2 years ago and it has helped me tremendously to know myself better and make sure I’m always focusing on my goals.

Many people make goals or New Year’s resolutions in January, but by February they’ve lost motivation or completely forgotten what that goal was at all. By doing monthly reflections, you’ll have time to review those goals and plan for what your next steps are every month. Just imagine how many goals you could get done in a year if you stay focused every month.

Monthly reflections are not hard to do and don’t need to take a lot of time. I’m gonna walk you through what I do to review and reflect every month. Plus I have 15 monthly reflection questions for you at the end to help you dive deeper into your monthly check-in.

monthly reflection questions

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Before we get started grab my monthly reflection workbook below and follow along with me.

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What is a Monthly Reflection and Why Do One?

A monthly reflection is a time to review and reflect on your past month’s accomplishments, your goals, and where you are at with them. This is when you can take time to hit the pause button on life for a moment to decide how you want to keep moving forward.

Maybe you noticed you didn’t spend as much time on your goals as you would have liked. Or ate out too much and didn’t save as much money as you had hoped. Or you didn’t get to hang out with friends and family as much.

Each monthly reflection gives you a chance to start over, re-evaluate, and make a new plan.

You can set time to reflect every week, month, quarter, and year if you would like. But today we are just talking about a monthly reflection. This is the time for you to reflect on your routines, habits, and smaller goals.


Things To Reflect On Each Month

Monthly Wins

When sitting down to do a self-reflection, it is always a good idea to start with something positive about yourself. We often forget about our big accomplishments throughout the month cause we are always in a state of “go, go, go, go”. This reflection time is supposed to be a time to hit pause and acknowledge your hard work. Make sure to recognize your big and small wins.

On the flip side, if you didn’t have as many wins take that as a time to learn more about yourself and how you get things done.

Review Current Habits and Routines

Now it’s time to go into the details of your everyday habits and routines.

Did you make a plan to go to the gym 3 times a week and it didn’t end up working out at all? Are you finding yourself to be tired all the time cause you aren’t getting enough sleep?

Use this time to brain dump all the habits and routines in your life that may or may not be working for you. Then if something needs to change, make a plan.

Do you need to set out your gym bag the night before so you remember to go after work? Or do you need to buy a cute water bottle to encourage yourself to drink more throughout the day?

Make your habits and routines work for you.

Related:

How to Build New Habits with 8 Easy Steps

What is a Routines? Why are They Important?

Review Your Goals

It is a great idea to get in the habit of reviewing your goals every month. This will keep you on top of them and make you more likely to achieve them in a timely matter.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when reviewing your goals:

  • Did I achieve my goal?
  • Did my approach work? Why or why not?
  • Is it something I still want to pursue?
  • How can I improve on actually getting it done?

One Positive Lesson

It is also good to end this reflection time on a positive note. Go back over your notes for the month and pick out one lesson you want to take away and learn from it.

Ask yourself how the lesson made you grow as a person and how you are going to apply it to your life this next month.

Your #1 Priority

Now that the reflection is basically done, go over your notes and decide on your #1 focus for next month.

You want to try and have just one main thing to focus on each month. Whether that’d be a project you’re working on or a certain area of your personal growth to work on, pick just one thing to prioritize next month.


15 Monthly Reflection Questions

After you go through the 5 things to reflect on above, grab a piece of paper and answer the rest of these questions. Each one will help you dive deeper into your monthly check-in.

Answer each question like a journal prompt. Take some time to really think about each question.

  1. What went well this month? What did I accomplish? How does it make me feel?
  2. What didn’t go so well? How can I improve for next month?
  3. What lessons did I learn this month? How did I grow as a person?
  4. What challenges did I face this month? How did I deal with them?
  5. What am I spending too little or too much time on?
  6. What didn’t go as planned? And how can I improve on it?
  7. Review any goals you set for this month. Did you reach them? Why or why not?
  8. Was there anything holding me back from reaching my goals?
  9. What goals do I have for next month?
  10. List 5 things that made you feel most grateful this month.
  11. What habits did I focus on this month and how did I do?
  12. Which habits should I continue working on next month? Why?
  13. Are there any bad habits I want to work on next month? Make an action plan.
  14. What new habits do I want to try and implement next month? Why?
  15. Overall, am I satisfied with how the month went? Why or why not?

Final Thoughts about Monthly Reflection

Try doing a monthly reflection every month for the next few months in a row and see how much more productive and motivated you are. By keeping up with it you have a higher chance of actually completing the goals or resolutions you set for yourself at the beginning of the year.

Wouldn’t it be cool to look back at 2022 next January and see that you actually completed all the goals you set out to do? Or even better, completed more goals than you thought you would?

It’s time to get ahead of your goals!

What goals do you have for the next month? Let me know in the comments below.

Ready to dive deep into self-reflection and get focused on your dreams this month? Check out the ⬇️


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