I love love love making goals every year. I find it so refreshing to start new and create a new part of me that nobody else knows about. I feel like I can be somebody new just by tweaking a few things and ultimately love myself more. I am a huge dreamer so typically I am dreaming all year long but I start to really really apply them in January.
This is how my goal planning typically goes. I start with thinking about them and taking them from every single angel. I work it down to a T. By the end of my thinking almost any question could be asked about my goal and I will have an answer. I don't leave any room for excuses like "oh I didn't think of that." I will know the difference between my goals at home and while on vacation. More times than not I will work Nathan into my planning phase. I like to get his ideas and know just how involved/ supportive he will be with a particular goal. I try to not to expect more than what he tells me.
Once the planning is thought out I try it out. I don't give myself any time fame here I just see if it is achievable. Honestly more times than not the goal isn't : ( So I go back to the creative board and see where it needs tweaking again. Sometimes I just drop it completely and other times I just make a few minor changes. My brain does this continually. When the New Year's hits though I have a pretty good idea on what specific goal(s) I want stick with for the entire year. I try not to pick more than a few goals at most because otherwise I forget them.
Last New Year's I made reading 50 books my goal. I had that same goal in 2012 but didn't intensely focus on it and only read 30 so I thought I'd try again. Well, 2013 I did even worse. I only read 28 books. However, this time I was not so bummed. I tried really really hard to read or listen to books in order to hit my number 50. It turns out I am a busy woman and even though I LOVE to read I don't exactly have time to finish a book every week. I did however discover something new about me with tracking down the books I read.
I discovered that I love reading self help books. Books that may have a bit of a story line but mostly are just there to teach you how to live differently and ... DREAM. One of the most memorable books I read was A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. It was about his life and how he went from normal/ average to awesome just by tweaking a few things with his everyday life. Mostly I loved that his words were boring in the beginning chapters and as the book went on his character was changing with each turning page. If he hadn't changed it would have been an awful book but by the end he was an entirely different person. It even has a few swear words (which usually I hate in books) in the beginning but none in the end because he didn't have God in his life in the beginning but did in the end. He changed his writing to really have the reader feel his changes.
Okay that was a bit of a tangent. I just wanted to say that I love making goals and I love changing into something better. This year I'm going with the old fashion sticker chart. Maybe someday I'll post details on my goals this year because THEY ARE AWESOME! I've only been doing them for a few weeks but because I have thought about them for months I know they are going to stick all year round. I made sure that I couldn't fail this year because 2 years in a row was a bit rough.
p.s. I also just finished Start by by Jon Acuff. There were WAY too many examples in each paragraph that I had a bit of a hard time reading it. However, if anyone needs help getting started with goals or changing their lives it is a great book to put you on the right path to awesome.
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