December Already?

Here I sit, a little in shock that it is December already. This year has flown by! I have celebrated the last of my four daughters’ birthdays and my own, breezed past a beautiful summer, started a new school year, coached many amazing clients, spoke to many amazing crowds, and created a powerful program to help corporate employees discover how leading from authenticity allows them to be more successful. I published 39 amazing episodes of The Brave Files Podcast and became a published co-author of Lose The Cape: The Mom’s Guide to Becoming Socially & Politically Engaged (& How to Raise Tiny Activists). I even participated in NaNoWriMo (trust me, that level of commitment to writing is intense but exciting!), began producing my new Gratitude Journal, and started writing a book!

Wow.

So, here we are at the end of the year. Do you know how the year went by so quickly? I truly feel like I just woke up on New Years Day 2018. Nonetheless, the new year approaches fast and we all know what that means – – goal setting!

for many, goal setting is an exciting time because it’s a fresh start. It's a chance to tackle new things and really push yourself. But, it’s also a stressful time. For many of us, me included, goal setting can be stressful. There are so many questions we ask ourselves: What do you want in the coming year? How do you want to get it and why does it matter?

Not Everything is Big

The end of the year is a great time to reflect on your overall why and vision – – do they still serve you? However, for this post, I am not talking about big picture reflection. Today, I am talking about the details. The decisions and choices you made day in and day out to run your life and business. 

First, it's about the details. We are talking about actual tasks you undertook in your business. For me, some of these tasks were producing a new podcast episode weekly, a new social media strategy, hiring new team members, launching (and then re-launching) my Chaos to Clarity Audio Course, daily writing, a goal of doing at least twelve public speaking engagements, signing six new 1:1 coaching clients, working weekly with my accountability partner. The list could go on, but you get the idea.

A New Approach

Attempting to goal set, before you properly reflect and reassess the past year, is not going to get you very far in the long run. It’s like going on an expensive, overseas vacation with a hotel reservation and a list of great restaurants to visit but without a plane ticket or way to pay for things! The idea sounds great, but the trip won’t actually happen until you have the logistics planned out. The same goes for goal setting. How in the world are you supposed to get where you’re trying to go if you don’t know the details on how to get there!?

One of the reasons we struggle to actualize goals set at the beginning of the year is because we don’t take intentional time to look at the past year and really assess and reassess what happened and how we want to move forward.

So, if you want to create realistic and achievable goals for 2019, read this and do these things first!

Set intentional time aside to reflect and make lists

Take a moment right now to schedule time in your calendar for reflection of the past year.

Seriously, stop reading after this paragraph and go do this.

First, consider the following when you do so:

• What worked really well?
• What didn’t work at all?
• What did you most enjoy?
• What made you unhappy?

Then, be sure to look at the past year from every angle including.

• What worked financially?
• What worked for clients?
• What worked for your schedule?
• What worked for your loved ones?
• What was easy (or hard)  to sell or promote?

Lastly, after you a spend intentional time thinking about the past year in all of these different and meaningful ways, you can begin to cull and sort them.

• What do you want to do again?
• What do you never want to do again?
• What new things are you inspired to try?

Now it’s time to goal plan!

Finally, now that you have looked at the past year and decided what worked and what didn’t, you are ready to make some plans for the New Year.

Stay tuned to see my thoughts on how to properly set goals. There will be some great freebies to help with your New Year planning!