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It is almost time for a new year!! That means it’s time for new goals! I actually really like to set goals. When a goal is set, I have a vision and a direction to follow, and I love the feeling of achieving something!

I love new year goals because it feels like a fresh start! I feel like new year goals are made to be a little extreme and should scare you a little bit! To me the best goals should get you out of your comfort zone and spark a fire within yourself, and goals don’t have to be over the top to do that!

In the past, I have made really broad and overly generalized goals. I have found that when goals are made this way, they are really hard to follow. For example, if you want to lose weight, your goals needs to go beyond just lose weight. It needs to have an element of direction and specifics. So instead, you might say, I want to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year by finding a work out routine that I enjoy doing.

This year I am trying to set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym and stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Based. This is how I learned SMART goals, but I do know that other people use slightly different terms.

Specific

This is one of the most important pieces when setting goals! When your goals are way too broad, they get lost and the vision can die. If you set a goal of hiking more, it’s so general that it can seem overwhelming and get overlooked. Instead if you set the goal of going on ten moderately difficult hikes that include a lake or waterfall, you now have a specific goals you want to achieve and you have clear action steps that you can take to get there.

Measurable

Measurability can help with the feeling of achievement and also making your goals specific. Like before if you set a goal of hiking more, you never really know when or if you hit your goals. What exactly is more? But when you say you want to go on ten hikes this year, you know you’ve met your goal when you have gone on ten hikes.

Attainable

Attainability is important because you don’t want to set a goal that just isn’t achievable. For example, you don’t want to set a goal of going to the moon this year because it’s not really achievable. Going on ten hikes in a year is totally attainable. But I also want stress that you shouldn’t make your goals small, just so they can be attainable. Don’t sell your goals short because you are scared of achieving them!

Realistic

To me, this part is really the same as attainable. You just want to make sure that your goals are achievable and not so out of this world that you can’t achieve it. I have also seen people use relevant rather than realistic. But to me, anything that you are thinking about is relevant so to me this is a bit of just a filler section!

Time Based

This part is pretty simple. It’s important to set time based goals to keep your goals on track. If you say you want to go on ten hikes this year, you know when you are reviewing your goals that you need so many more hikes to hit your goal and it will put more of a fire under your ass to achieve it. But if you just say you want to hike more, there is no time limit and an open ended goal that has no motivation.

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Using these different aspects really helps to set achievable goals. I set all my goals for 2020 using these aspects and it has really helped me put action steps in place. 2019 I set a lot of big goals and I learned a lot about goal setting. The first half of the year I didn’t achieve much but when I really dove into my goals the second half of the year, I achieved quite a lot! Here are a couple tips I used to keep my goals on track the second half of 2019.

1. Put Action Steps In Place

I started doing this and it helped me so much! What I did was I set my goals, then I set steps I needed to do in order to achieve that goal. After I did that, I broke those steps down into smaller monthly and weekly goals. For example, I set a goal for myself to understand social media a little bit better. This is a broad goal, so I knew I needed to make it a little more specific and I needed my action steps. What I did was break it out into different social media platforms and assigned different platforms to different months. This meant for December, I would focus on Pinterest. Once I assigned the monthly goal, then I broke it down into weekly goals and things to focus on. Having these action steps already laid out kept my goals alive and kept me moving forward!

2. Review Your Goals

This is so huge because it is important to review what you are doing to make sure you are on the right track. I started reviewing my goals after every month. This means at the end of the month, I took a look back and first I highlighted all I did and all that I achieved. Then I took an honest look at what I didn’t achieve and what I need to adjust for the next month. Then I would set my goals for the next month down to the weekly steps.

When reviewing goals too, it’s important to make sure your goals are still aligned with what you want. If you are finding that a certain goal is stressing you out or might not be something you want anymore, it’s time to review and redirect. For example, if you set a goal to hike ten times but you go on one hike and hate it, you probably want to redirect your goal somewhere else. This is a pretty extreme example but for me, when I was learning social meeting I felt like Twitter was really not for me, so for the time being, I am putting it on the back burner.

3. Place Your Goals Somewhere You’ll See Them

Life can get so crazy and sometimes goals get lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I have found that when I place my goals somewhere I look all the time, I’m reminded of them and stay focused. So my general goals are always posted to my calendar in my bedroom. This includes my big goals, my yearly goals and I also put my monthly goals on there. My monthly goals are also written in my planner on the big monthly spread. My weekly goals are written down in my planner as well on the weekly spread pages. I look at my planner every single day so this is a great place for me to put my goals.

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So, these are my tips and my tricks for setting goals and staying focused! This week and next week I am really diving into my action steps and my planning! But I have set some general goals already! I’ll leave you with some of my goals for next year and I hope you set some goals for yourself!

• Hike once a month
• Go to Disneyland with my sister
• Go to Disney World with my daughter
• Take a family vacation to Montana
• Go to Missouri at least twice!
• Work on my mental health
• Add self care section to blog
• Start YouTube channel
• Catch a tiger muskie
• Clean up my diet

Drop your 2020 goals in the comments! Happy new year!