Why you SHOULD write down goals every year!

The benefits of goal setting and my personal experience of doing it every year. My reflections on my last years goals and vision board for 2025. If you need inspo to do yours, I hope this will help

Happy New Year to you all…this is the selfie I took for this post today so you can see the person behind the article. I love a publishing article day as my creative energy is flowing. (Even though I have two kids sick, and I was up all night with them, feeding them water and settling them back down)

Anyways, I started writing this article last year but never posted it, so I have shifted to something else. It started by explaining my lack of writing articles last year, but after reflection, I realised I wrote a lot more than I did, considering where my mind was. I will go into this in more detail below.

I am sharing with you all my experience with goal setting and how I have found it to be a fantastic practice. I do it annually and reflect on them regularly to understand how I track and where things need to shift.

I share one of the many vision boards I created … yes, I have more than one vision board this year because this year will be life-changing for my beautiful family. We will share more about what is in store for this year next month, so keep tuned in for that announcement.

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Writing and Motherhood

One of my goals last year was to write articles weekly, which was a VERY UNREALISTIC goal for a newborn mama of 2 kids under 2.

Writing this past year has been all over the shop for me, which showcases how motherhood has affected me and what months have been the hardest, as I usually didn’t write or post during those weeks.

I had a few weeks and months where I was able to reach writing for about 13 weeks in a row, and it felt sooo amazing to be achieving my weekly goal of writing, but then it came to the point that I got overwhelmed by it as life and motherhood was feeling heavy on me.

I didn’t want to stop writing, but I knew I couldn’t stop mothering and showing up for my kids day and night; for them, it always came as a priority. Not my extracurricular activity of writing.

2024 WRITING RESULTS = 23 Articles out of 52 weeks

• Results—I had hoped to write weekly articles all year and only managed 77%, which isn’t that bad in percentage. Still, if I had written 30+ articles, I would have been a little more impressed with myself. I knew I would never write 52 weeks, as I had so many moments when I was happy not to write and let my life crash over me. However, I didn’t openly admit that until later in the year.

• Being such a go-getter, ambitious person, I love a challenge and thought it was just that I did not fully understand that it wasn’t a challenge but just that my mental health was not very good with the lack of sleep I was getting, and sleep deprivation was horrible.

(I took this photo to remind myself how hard it was to sleep between two little ones constantly and have no space to sleep at night).

LESSONS

If your health impacts your life, it will automatically alter your whole plan and goals for the year, so one of the things I have incorporated into my planning is having MORE space for “life” to happen.

But more importantly, I am sharing this with my partner (Tony), who struggles with following any plan or schedule. Because our planning this year is focused on family first, and he contributes to this plan and how it functions, we both work at two different speeds, and it has to be comfortable for us both. Co-creating a plan as a couple vs an individual is a shift because goal setting can be so personal, but when you live with someone or have a family with someone, it becomes a TEAM PLAN.

So you have to work together and adjust to these kinds of plans to work with each other’s differences, which can be challenging in ways but also a bonus as you have someone to help you achieve them.

This year, it is new for us to co-create our goals as a TEAM vs. individually, as last year, we did separate goal setting. I share my results later in the article, but for Tony, who isn’t accustomed to making or following goal setting, his results weren’t what he wanted them to be. We hope that by doing them together, we can help each other become accountable and motivate one another.

It's like having a yoga buddy you always go to class with every week. THANK YOU, LORRAINE and PAT, for always motivating me to attend class on Mondays. That was actually Tony’s goal for me to go to yoga classes and to meditate regularly.

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GOALS

Goal setting is fantastic and something I have done my whole life, regardless of the time of year. I love to do them at the beginning of the year so that I can track them throughout the year, I reflect, shift, and make new ones as life changes.

The reality of goal setting now

Being a full-time mama with two kids, 2 and 1 year old, I have realised that my work is theirs. I have no time for anything that once worked. Since accepting this new role, it has been challenging to let go of my past work, which I also loved dearly.

Now, I still keep my practice of setting “goals” and better work intentions as a mama. My family lifestyle is my work and figuring out how to manage and run the household on a day-to-day rhythm has taken me two months to get some clear ideas and practices in place to feel like I can function.

Flexibility is key, and not being harsh on myself if things never go to plan is where life is always at min by min, hour by hour, day by day as my children are constantly teaching me that functioning how I once did is never going to work. As a self-employed business owner, I had so much flexibility in my schedule and what I would do in a day with work-related tasks and projects.

However, I still plan my to-dos each day. This is a practice I want to keep because, being a mama, I get distracted every minute and can easily forget what I was even doing most of the time. Now my attitude is if they do get done, excellent and if they don’t get done, that’s fine because much more important things had my attention, which is usually my kid’s nee needs.

There are so many methods of how to goals or intent set, but what has been a constant piece of advice I have heard time and time again is that just by writing it down, you are 42% of achieving than by NOT! That is why I have always kept this practice going in my life because I know it to be accurate as I have witnessed many of my past goals have been achieved that I have written down... NOT ALL of them, and that is important to note.

Then, I reflect on the ones that don’t get ticked off to see why.

• The goal was not something I cared for as much as I thought.

• the goal was unrealistic to get done in a year

• the goal is a bigger goal that requires more time

• the goal required more financial assistance or time. I didn’t expect

• may I put too many goals

Then, I decide whether to keep it moving forward or delete it and let it go.

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For People Who Avoid Goal Setting or Do Not Know How To Set Goals

I first experienced it with my friends when I was younger, as I always had a goal to travel every year, and most of my friends didn’t. Then, I witnessed this even more when setting goals with Tony. I understand why some would avoid or feel pressured by their goals if they don’t achieve them, and others never think about it. Knowing how to set goals or even thinking about them doesn’t come naturally to everyone.

I learnt a lot about goal setting, but I also know my mother always asks me, “What are you going to do today?” she is very goal-oriented, so subconsciously, I feel like it came from her constant need to be productive.

There is NO right or wrong way, and it doesn’t matter if NONE of them achieve in a year. It can be fun imagining the things you want to come into your life in a year, and it should fill you up with joy and excitement versus something you avoid or don’t know what to do and ignore.

Having fun by creating a vision board but also looking back at your last year's goals and seeing where you have grown and what you achieved and didn’t get done is a significant part of the process. I go into my personal experience in more detail below.