Goal Talk

Even though it often feels that New Years goals are cliche and overdone, I still kind of love them! I’m all for making goals and getting starting any time of the year, and New Years goals feel so natural, that I can’t count myself out of the millions making new (and sometimes old) promises to myself. Especially after the utter insanity that December brings, January feels like the perfect time to start fresh. Everything slows down, and you can take time to breathe, relax, and really think about what you want the next twelve months of your life to be like.

This past fall I gave myself two goals that I completely lost focus of over the holidays, and I’m excited to get back to. They’re both pretty common ones in ways, but both are things that I enjoy doing (if I can just get myself to do them) and benifit me (maybe not financially or anything, but more on a personal level). So here they are : Exercise, and blog. Groundbreaking, right?

I’m trying to be more mindful to not set my goals too high. Just like I know I wouldn’t be able to climb Everest this year, why would I make any other goals for myself that I know are not realistic for me at this point in my life? I don’t expect myself to exercise for an hour every day, or blog five times a week. If I were to expect that from myself, I would be setting myself up for failure in a big way, there’s just no way I could keep up with that on top of my work and personal life. I’ve always been really tough on myself, and would usually expect myself to accomplish these huge goals and then beat myself up for it, and usually end up quitting altogether because of it. In the end, setting those goals just ended up being a negative experience. 

This past year though, I’ve been working on giving myself realistic goals and trying to celebrate small wins. I’m goaling myself at exercising and blogging twice a week. But say, I have a crazy, hard week? I should still pat myself on the back if I only did those things once. That’s not to say it should be a pattern, but I’m trying harder to not kick myself when I’m down, because that’s when I’m always tempted to just stop altogether.

I also have one more little goal I just came up with on NYE, and that is to start journaling agian. I used to love journaling. I actually have a huge box filled with journals from when I was a teenager. I’ve been really wanting to sharpen my writing skills, and journaling is such a natural way to do that. I was definitely hugely inspired by Elise’s last podcast with Crystal Moody. I love how she wanted to be better at drawing, and thought that if she had a nice big stack of drawings at the end of the year then there would most likely be at least a couple good ones in there. I love that! Practice makes perfect, and I think as an adult I tend to forget that.

What are some goals you’re setting for yourself this year, or maybe are still working on?