[PODCAST 272]: Anytime Goal Setting–Create Your Year!

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[PODCAST 272]: Anytime Goal Setting–Create Your Year!

2d ago 41:42

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Are you looking for a step-by-step process to “create your year”–with goals that actually work with busy households and the ups and downs of life?

Here at LearnDoBecome, we’re growth-minded and action-oriented. Although “life” happens to all of us, we believe that we can create much of our reality–so we can wake up excited and go to bed content each day. That includes having the bandwidth to truly rest and replenish. “Achieving goals” and “getting the most tasks checked off” aren’t the goals.

Today I’m walking through the process I personally went through over the past few weeks to create my year. I’m excited to share it with you–not because this is the “right” way, but because whenever I hear how others approach their goal setting, it gives me new ideas and perspectives, and I thought it might be helpful to you if I shared mine!

***Three Quick Announcements:

We have an accompanying worksheet that goes along with today’s podcast, so you can create your year right alongside us! Click here to download yours for free.
Inside our ARISE membership this month (January 2025), we’re doing “Create Your Year LIVE!” This will give you the chance to get additional support resources, community and coaching, and lots of encouragement and accountability. If you’re brand new, you can access a 60-day FREE trial to ARISE by clicking here!
And if you’d like to get organized with our community inside our STEP program, we have a four-week accountability group called STEP Momentum, starting Wednesday, January 8th! It’s going to be amazing! Click here to learn how fun it will be!

Now we can jump into the step-by-step process!

The written summary is below.

The audio version can be accessed by clicking the “play” button above or listening on the podcast app of your choice.

STEP #1: The “Best Moments” Exercise

In Jon Acuff’s excellent book, All It Takes Is a Goal, he shares the process for creating a “Best Moments” list. The full book is WELL-worth purchasing (I have the audio and physical copy), so I recommend you check it out for all the details, but this is how I created mine… I simply opened my camera roll on my phone and scrolled through the last year–noting on a sheet of paper next to me what kinds of moments were my favorites. Typically, I’m kind of private about things like this, but I’ll include a photo so you can get a sense for what kinds of things I recorded.

STEP #2: Self-Care

One of the main reasons goal setting has been tricky for me in the past is because I felt like I was “behind” or “not there yet” the whole year. I wouldn’t do things for the sheer joy they brought to me. I did them so I could check off boxes and get closer to achieving my goals. And I wasn’t necessarily achieving goals so that my life would feel better in the moment. I wanted to do things that would impress other people–so I would have evidence that I mattered. (Ahhh, hard to write that!)

I don’t believe it’s wrong to work hard for something or to “achieve” things. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I believe that everything worthwhile takes work, and there’s a lot of joy and meaning baked into achievement. However, I want to feel peaceful, joyful, and aligned with my Higher Power each day. I want to be a becomer–not just an achiever. (We have a whole post on that linked at the bottom of this page.)

So in the “Self-Care” section of this process, I listed Spirit, Mind, and Body down the left side of the worksheet, and then across the top, I have two questions:

How do I want to feel throughout AND by the end of the year?
Which projects, routines, or activities would best support that outcome?

The first question means a lot to me because I want to feel great on day ONE–not just day 365. Mentally, for example, I want to feel calm, invigorated, and clear–every day of the year.

The second question is helpful because it gives me the chance to identify what will make that possible. For example, I’ve been talking about the “Feeling Great” app a lot lately. It was created by Dr. David Burns, and I have been using it to help identify my distorted thinking patterns. Using this app regularly is helping me feel calm and clear.

I’ve also been making time for learning every day. I have an awesome book light that I can use when the house lights are dim (I’ll link to it below!), so I’m making my way through my stack of books in the evenings while I sit by our fireplace. I’ve also been buying books for my Kindle app, listening to audiobooks on Spotify, and taking online courses. All of these things help my mind to feel invigorated.

You may have a different way that works for you to brainstorm your self-care, but hopefully this format gives you some ideas!

STEP #3: Family, Home, and Relationships

This section has 3 columns:

Specific relationship or element of home life (organization, budget, traditions, etc.)
What would be your optimal experience together/in your home this year?
(Like in Step #2) Which projects, routines, or activities would best support that outcome?

Back when I worked at FranklinCovey, I learned about “Roles and Goals” and outlined them in my planner each week. The idea was that before you set goals for the week, you would identify all the roles that you play–and then you’d connect a goal to each relationship on your Weekly Compass card..

The same concept applies here. I love to think of my most important relationships–my husband, Eric, our children, son-in-law, and grandchild, our extended family members, our neighbors, and our friends far away, for example.

Thinking about each relationship this way–and visualizing how we will grow closer together this year–inspires me to prioritize people over projects.

This is also a good place to think about other aspects of our home life. Do you want to declutter the whole house this year? Get your finances in order with your spouse? Create better traditions around holidays and birthdays? SO many people tell me that they have everything in hand at work, but then they come home, and it’s just chaos. They don’t want to be there. That hurts my heart because I want each person to have a safe, loving, happy home environment where everyone can thrive.

Perhaps this is a good time for you to assess how you feel at home and if there’s anything you want to improve.

STEP #4: Professional and Volunteer Work

There are 3 columns in this section of the worksheet, as well:

Current situation you’d like to improve
What is your desired change or outcome?
(Like in Steps 2 & 3) Which projects, routines, or activities would best support that outcome?

Sometimes this can feel like a really big section for me. There are literally hundreds of things I want to change and improve in my professional and volunteer work. However, I like to think of bigger themes here. For example, I want more connection with people in our community this year–both our virtual community here at LearnDoBecome and our in-person community in our neighborhood and city. And I want my efforts to actually make a difference, which means I need some way to measure those efforts and the results they produce. Anyway, this is a fun one for me, as long as I think big picture and don’t get caught in the weeds.

STEP #5: Specific, Tangible Goals

The brainstorms in the earlier steps are really helpful for me to get a sense of how things are going and what I want in each area of my life, but I don’t set a formal goal for every specific thing I wrote down. It would be too much for me to track. Instead, I regularly review these brainstorms, but I trust that many of the things I want will happen naturally with the calendared events, routines, and projects I’ll put into place.

For the coming year, I personally chose 4 specific, tangible goals in the areas of life that matter most to me.

The accompanying worksheet has a place to record a few goals, and then there are two questions to the side, inviting you to select the simplest, minimum level that could satisfy your desire and the aspirational level you may not reach, but that would be ideal.

I include these “minimal” and “aspirational” levels for two reasons:

While reading the book How to Be Miserable, I learned that if we give ourselves a range of options when it comes to goal-setting, we can avoid the perfectionism trap. This has made it so much more fun and relaxing to work toward my goals because I have a super-easy “minimum” that I can accomplish as long as I show up and try. And then I have an aspirational level that gives me a way to “shoot for the stars,” but I don’t feel like a failure if I don’t make it.

Also, in Jon Acuff’s goal-setting book, he talks about easy, middle, and guaranteed goals, and he shares that we are MUCH more likely not to give up on our goals if we can have some quick wins. Plus, he encourages us to start with easy goals (that last 1-7 days and are basically Next Actions or super small projects), and then when we’re deciding on our bigger goals, we ask ourselves, “Which easy goals did I enjoy?” That way, we aren’t setting goals to do things we hate. We’re creating opportunities to do more of what we love.

Two of my specific tangible goals for this year are to “feel 20 again” and to “do life with friends.” And I know these probably sound nebulous, but I’ll talk about how I track them in the next step!

STEP #6: Progress Tracking

Some years, I haven’t wanted to track my progress. There was so much going on in my life that I just wanted to calm down and take care of myself–and not worry about my sticker charts or Streaks app or calendars with checkboxes.

“Tracking” isn’t completely necessary. We’re still good people if we don’t have metrics to prove it.

However, this year, I’m in the tracking mood again.

In All It Takes Is a Goal, Jon shares three things we can track:

Time invested
Activities completed
Results

And he shares that tracking can be helpful so that our brains can see that we are making progress. Otherwise, we might end up looking side to side and comparing ourselves with others. (I’ve been guilty of that!)

For my “20 Again” goal, I’m tracking “activities completed.” More specifically, I’m going to do 3 weekly check-ins with my health coach. I know that as long as I am communicating with my coach, I’ll be doing the things that will help me become healthier.

For my “Do Life With Friends” goal, Eric and I are tracking our results. We’re aiming to do 2-4 social events per month with friends. We’ll plan week by week when we do our couples’ planning session, but this will help us to make more personal connections.

You may have a fun method already outlined for tracking your progress, but one additional thing I want to add is that it’s important to track things that we can actually control. Sometimes I’ve measured my success based on the decisions other people choose to make, and that obviously didn’t work. When I can trust my own efforts–even if I were to get sick or have something really hard happen during the process–that makes my goals feel exciting.

Closing:

All right! I hope that this process has felt helpful to you and that you are excited to work on your goals (at any time during the year).

My dad used to tell me, “April, you don’t have to wait until the new year to set your goals. Anytime you need to change something, you just do it right then.” I loved that. And I agree. I’m setting a few specific goals for this year, but if, a couple of months in, I discover there’s a more pressing need, or if I’m not waking up excited and going to bed content, I can make an adjustment.

We can always adjust.

Sometimes I look back on goals I set years ago, and I think, “Wow, I am still so far away from that….”

But the point of all this isn’t to demand perfection or make ourselves important by achieving impressive things. The point is to deliberately create a structure for our year so we can put our energy toward what matters most.

I’m sending lots of love!!

(And if you’re reading this right when it’s published, please know you’re invited to two upcoming live events! Our get-organized-for-2025 event, STEP Momentum, kicks off on Wednesday, January 8th, 2025, and our “Create Your Year LIVE” happens inside our ARISE membership on Tuesday, January 14th. We’d love to meet you there!)