I’m a To-Do list person. There I said it. I don’t have any objections to flying by the seat of your pants, but I personally have never been able to operate like that. Ever since I was little, I had all different types of organizational items within an arm’s reach away. Journals, diaries, planners, colourful writing tools, and all the stickers you could possibly think of and it all brought me so much joy. Sure, it’s not like I was planning a world peace movement, rather a few playdates with my friends here and there. However, there was something about knowing what I wanted to achieve in a certain amount of time that I believe has largely driven me to where I am now.
Now even thought it’s the end of January, I still like to revisit my goals and intentions I set for this year. Now I’m not a huge fan of a New Year’s Resolution like some may be, but I do believe in setting overarching themes for the year so I can intentionally achieve goals I plan for myself. As a society, we tend to get wrapped up in the New Year flutter that fills the first week of January. This is ~completely~ fine, if you don’t get burned out. I found that in the years that I made huge goals for myself and went really hard in the first couple of weeks in January, by the time February or March rolled around, I didn’t feel like those goals were attainable/ didn’t want to achieve them anymore. I like to remember that yes if you set goals intentionally then you want to achieve them, however if circumstances change that inhibit you from achieving specific goals, then change them. Don’t say you epically failed and just write it off as a big NOPE for the year. Make sure your goals are aligned with what you want to see from yourself this year. Sometimes I felt like if I hadn’t achieved my various goals by March then I wasn’t going fast enough or wouldn’t be able to accomplish them all. WRONG! The intention is for the goals to be achieved throughout the full year, not the first quarter of the year. Remember, goal setting is not a race it’s a marathon. Sure you want to set yourself up for success, but kindly give yourself grace when needed. If you haven’t glanced back over your goals/word of the year/resolutions/vision boards, or whatever you chose to elaborate on this year, then I would highly encourage you to do so.
As the first month of 2021 is nearing its close, I intend to take this weekend as an opportunity to look through my previously laid out goals to check in and make sure that they still align with my intentions. The way I chose to lay out my goals this year was to separate them into different subsections, if you will, and then followed up with dot points for each. Some of my categories included Lifestyle, Personal Development, Finances, Faith, and Food/Dietary Needs to name a few of the 11 I originally created. I also found it helpful that I didn’t put a huge goal in each category, but rather small task-oriented actions under each to ensure I am working daily towards improving upon the categories. If I had set over 11 large goals, I think I would’ve become too overwhelmed to even begin. Throughout the coming months, I intend to check in with these goals and then write either the date it was achieved or if its a daily type of goal, like drinking 70 oz of water a day, I would come back to that at the end of year to see if I was able to uphold that standard for myself.
I tend to write my goals in my planner so then I have it all in one place and don’t have to keep track of random pieces of paper throughout the year. After the middle of last year, I basically threw the towel in on planners because I didn’t see any reason to buy and write in them. This year I thought to myself that even if I don’t have huge plans or consistent weekly items to add to the planner, it’s still a worthy investment since it will help me orient myself throughout the various months. Now that my blog has been reborn, I can now use it to plan out my posts more efficiently. You don’t have to get fancy and buy a super expensive planner either, a desk pad, or a journal with the year of dates would also work for intentional goal/yearly planning.
All in all, I’ll wrap up this post by saying that giving yourself grace when you are planning your goals or your weeks or even your days is so important. As we all experienced, 2020 and even throughout this first month of 2021, we have experienced a ton of mixed emotions everyday. How do we plan for that? We don’t, because there is no possible way to plan for unexpected surprises that will ensue various emotions. What we can do, is control our reactions and strive towards spreading positivity and love to all… which is exactly what I hope to do with this blog.
Comment below one of your goals for 2021 or what you use for your planner! If you don’t want to post them publicly, just DM them to me on instagram @saraeliseblog š Thanks for reading!
–Sara š
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Sara Elise 