This is the time of year that we all get together and decide what we will do for the new year. It is the perfect time of the year for people to point fingers at Pinterest Girls and laugh at “false” goal setting. Women can never enjoy anything. Goals are important and we should be making them every day, which doesn’t mean we do. A lot of us, including myself, fail constantly at keeping the goals I make. Yet I love the new year for one thing…..Hope and new life. The new year makes most of us feel as our past is behind us and we are starting over again. For some, it might be your birthday or Ramadan or Christmas, and etc., it doesn’t really matter what significant day makes you feel energized to take on a new day. It’s all about being able to take on the new day or new year ahead. The week before New Years is a great time for most people to sit down, with a cup of whatever and think about what they want for this year.

To create a successful plan for the future, first, start by seeing what you did accomplish! Perhaps your graduated school or some type of program, whoop you did it! It could be that you gave birth, or you got pregnant. It also doesn’t need to be that big of an accomplishment, it could be that you managed to start taking care of yourself better or you started to check your email daily. Take all your positives of the year and reflect on them. These positives are what you accomplished. The next obvious thing is to look at all the things that frustrated you this year. Write them down, in little bullet points. You don’t need to describe your positives or negatives, as long as you know what they are. With those negatives how many of those were out of your control? Such as someone hitting your car, theft, or etc. Take those and catalog them, because there’s nothing you could have done to prevent certain negatives, just like there is no way you could prevent certain positives. There should be negatives however that you might have changed but didn’t, such as losing weight or starting a new business.

Figure out why you didn’t do what you wanted to do. Was it you or something else? What can you do to change it? This is the most difficult part of all goal-setting tasks because you have to get over yourself, you might be a person who blames others….STOP IT…..or you might be a person who blames yourself…..STOP IT. I’m going to tell you the age-old boomer talk that surprising has lots of wisdom, “get over yourself buttercup.” If you start recognizing certain behaviors and patterns for your mental health, then seek help. I will link some sites that you can check out if you honestly think some issues are mental. If so then there is no getting over yourself without help, you might have to get over yourself and show up to a doctor. We constantly sit there and go “I could have done that differently” or we sit on the couch hoping to do something but have no energy to do it. We have to fight ourselves over and over and over again. The only way to win is by creating positive habits for ourselves so we don’t have to fight ourselves. The sucky thing is that it generally makes us uncomfortable.

So what do you want to do this year? Just list it out, and don’t worry about anything being realistic. Just write what you want. Afterward look at your list, what is realistic? Did you list loose weight or read 30 books or get pregnant? These are realistic, but what you need to do is break it down even further. Which I know is crazy but it works I promise. Don’t say “lose weight”, put a good reasonable amount such as “10 pounds in 2 months” or something like that. Then place in your goals things you can do get those goals to come to life. For the weight loss goal put to get a gym membership or start walking 1 mile every day (minus if it is raining). Force yourself to set little achievable goals. Your goals need to have achievable steps.

Some goals will take time, like writing a book might take more than a year but if you can plan some basic action to get it done. It can be obtained by you. When we give ourselves vague goals, its easier to blow them aside. Figure out how you get what you want and set it up for yourself. You might fail at some adventures but that’s life, and we have to take risks to achieve what you want. Maybe you realize something doesn’t work for you, you don’t have to continue on the goal.

This year I managed to do three of the things I planned, one of the things didn’t work out but hey, what can I do. Life is a constant battle with our inner demons. I fight sloth-like “demons” like no other, I mean it. Most of the things I wanted to do, I didn’t because I was “tired” or “bored” or just waited for a perfect time. I still do it and I’m fighting every day to get over myself. It is hard. When I make goals that I can take tiny steps to, I feel more in control of my life. I’m also able to achieve my goals when I break down a big goal to small little ones, that lead up to the big one. This year I have to sit down and plan out my life. One of those goals is to get someone to read to my blog! We will see, won’t we?

Happy New Year, everyone.