Hello, welcome. Thank you so much for being here!
Today I’m sharing three steps for setting achievable goals for lifelong success.
In a flurry of activity and holiday joy, we have entered the new year. All of a sudden it’s mid-January and I am now only just getting the time to sit down and record a few goals and set some plans in motion (one of them being this blog! Thank you for checking this out!)
This is also the perfect time to address setting achievable goals since, by the fourth week of January, many people feel discouraged from achieving their goals for the year and have chosen to relinquish their resolutions. If you are one of these people, then keep reading!
Whenever planning achievements for the new year, it’s always helpful to review the previous year – and even the past three weeks of this month. Analyze the goals you achieved in 2021 and what desires you chose to let go of and why. Recall what tools helped you achieve your goals and design how to implement them this coming year.
(I love to record these thoughts and processes in my bullet journal, but a regular planner, notebook, or even a simple sheet of paper will work just as well.)
2021 was the year I finally learned the importance of small, actionable steps. Write down the goals you want to achieve this year – but don’t stop there!
Break down your goals into smaller, more manageable steps so that 1) it’s not as overwhelming to you and 2) as you journey to this goal, you can see all that you have accomplished on the road to your goal and be encouraged!
For example, in 2021 one of my larger goals was to make more food from scratch. I didn’t then immediately begin making bread, yogurt, granola, bone broth, pasta, and canning vegetables from our garden. That would’ve been incredibly overwhelming and reduced the likelihood of me sticking to, and achieving, my goal.
In order to not get discouraged a few weeks into the new year, I broke down my big goal and started making only bread from scratch – not even sourdough bread – just a simple honey wheat loaf that I made at the beginning of each week. I didn’t worry about purchasing packaged yogurt or bone broth and canned goods.
After I’d gotten into a rhythm and felt I had mastered the bread making, I added making yogurt in the InstaPot to my beginning of the week routine.
After a few weeks of being comfortable handling making both bread and yogurt from scratch, I added granola, and then bone broth.
No, I haven’t made everything in our kitchen from scratch. I still haven’t made pasta or even broached the subject of canning, but those are each one of the steps in my journey to the goal of creating our from-scratch kitchen.
All of these little achievable steps led to my overarching goal that will continue into this new year. I’ve made more food from scratch in 2021 than I did in 2020, and I am following these helpful tips to achieve the same result for 2022.
What are the steps for setting achievable goals?
Step One: Choose your goal.
Step Two: Answer: what does achieving this goal look like for you and/or your family?
Step Three: Start with only one step provided from the list you developed in step two.
Let’s say for 2022 you’d like to live more intentionally. What does it look like for your family to live intentionally? Maybe this includes a purge of items and appliances that remain unused for long periods of time. This could include a wardrobe declutter of clothes, shoes, and accessories that are infrequently used. This could simply include a commitment to abstaining from purchasing fad items and online impulse shopping.
Each of these possibilities is one step toward reaching your goal for the year to live more intentionally. Even if you only choose one of these steps – you did it! You’ve lived more intentionally in 2022 than you did in 2021.
Maybe you’re looking to live more sustainably in 2022. What does it mean to you to live sustainably? Possibly eliminating single-use plastics, reducing food waste, composting, and supporting sustainable clothing practices or avoiding fast fashion.
Each of these options are a small step in your journey to living more sustainably. You don’t have to complete all of these steps within the year in order to live more sustainably in 2022. Even if you enact only one of these smaller goals, you are still living more intentionally in 2022 than you did in 2021.
The point of this post is to give you a plan of action, to show you how to break down one large goal into smaller, more manageable steps. To share with you the tools that help me achieve my goals.
Keep in mind that we aren’t setting out for instant gratification. We’re achieving a natural, steady evolution over the course of the entire year so that once we’ve achieved these goals, we maintain them for rest of our lives.
I hope this post proved helpful to you! Breaking down one large goal into smaller, consistently achievable parts is incredibly helpful for successful goal setting and achieving.
I’d love to hear what some of your big goals are, and the steps that you’re taking to make your dreams a reality.
Thank you so much for your time!
