Happy New Year!

I always love this time of year. The chaos of the holidays is over and this type A personality can get back into a routine and normal schedule :).

I also love the blank page that sits before us, allowing us to create and visualize an entire year!

I think January presents a unique opportunity to learn from recent lessons and create intentions for what might make us happier or more full this coming year.

In honor of that idea, I’ll be posting a Goal Setting and Intention Creating series in the coming weeks.

Whether the idea of creating vision boards and setting goals is totally your jam or scares you to death, I think you’ll find some helpful tips and tricks in the upcoming posts!

Today I want to talk about the three things I believe are critical to achieving and realizing the goals you set for yourself.

Decide how you want to FEEL

This concept comes from Danielle LaPorte and has completely changed how I set goals for myself.

We are used to using our goals to decide what we WANT. Such as to lose ten pounds, drink less coffee, get a promotion at work or meditate every day.

We very rarely connect a feeling to that goal, which is often times why we aren’t motivated to actually reach those goals.

I want you to take 20 minutes this week to write down your goal FEELINGS. Take a piece of paper and write down any feeling that is important to you. Don’t think too much. Just let the words flow and write them all down. Examples here are:
joyful
energized
peaceful
influential
professional
important
artistic
creative
content
abundant
affluent
feminine
active
healthy
strong
sexy
balanced

Once you’ve written them all down, you are going to pick the six most important feelings to you.

You are then ready to write some goals! But now you can write goals that are designed to get you closer to your goal FEELING.

For example, you may think you have a goal to run a marathon this year when you’ve never run one before. But your goal feeling is actually peaceful. You might realize that the strategy sessions, planning, early wake up calls, long weekend runs, injury prevention, fueling and time away from family and friends won’t make you feel peaceful at all! Instead, you may want to consider a goal of two yoga or Pilates classes a week and then a yoga retreat in the fall.

If your goal feeling is energized or strong, the marathon might be right up your alley!

See the connection?

Write your goals so that they lead you towards your goal feelings. You’ll have a much higher chance of sticking with your goals and of being happy.

Set yourself up to succeed

You have your goal feelings written down and you are ready to write some goals.

Great!

You can now either write goals that set you up for success or failure.

Michael Hyatt talks about making goals that are “uncomfortable”. If you write goals that are too easy, they won’t stretch you or help you grow. If you chose a goal that is delusional, it’s way too far out of the realm of possibility to reach.

For example, if I chose a goal of dancing around my house, that’s too easy. I already do that. If I chose a goal of becoming a Lakers girl at the age of 39, that’s just delusional.

A goal of taking dance lessons is probably just right. It’s uncomfortable in that I have to dance in front of people I don’t know and I have to sacrifice some money and free time. But it’s doable and would help me reach my goal of being a better dancer.

How you write your goals and word them can help set you up to succeed.

Take action

Now it’s time to take some action!

It’s great to write down your goals, but without actually taking the steps every day to achieve them, they are just words on a page.

If you want to be able to hold a plank for a minute, you have to practice planks!

If you want to become good at meal planning, you need to get out some paper and cookbooks and start meal planning!

If you want to work out three times every week, you have to actually work out three times a week!

This is the tough love, no excuses portion of reaching your goals. You have to decide it’s important to you and think of how you’ll feel once you’ve hit the mark! It won’t always be easy or fun, but it will always be worth it.

I challenge you to write down your goal feelings this week. Then write a few goals that make you “uncomfortable” and, finally, an action plan to start taking steps towards that goal! Stay tuned for my ultimate guide for actually setting and writing goals coming soon!