goal setting in 2021

HAPPY 2021 y’all!!

I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to fall into the ‘death to 2020’ crowd because I know that the clock striking midnight won’t magically fix all the problems from the past year BUT… gosh this new year hit me differently! I had never been one to be overly excited about a new year. In my eyes, the new year had always been just another day but this 2021 seems different.

The simple idea a new start is refreshing. There is more hope and optimism coming into a year that has not yet been soiled. Again, I’m aware the past few days didn’t erase all the pain many are feeling right now, but I can already feel the positive energy and attitudes of many starting this new year!

With that said, I, like many others, am also coming into this year optimistic and hopeful. I am very excited not just for 2021, but for my college graduation and everything that comes with being a college graduate!! This year symbolizes many new beginnings to me which is why I felt is super important to goal set for 2021.

In the past, I have made New Year’s Resolutions and have failed pretty quickly. Coming into this year, I wanted to keep the amount of disappointment to a minimum so I decided to look at my resolutions, or goals, in a different way.

There are 5 actions I took to set my goals for 2021 that I want to share with you!

Create an Overarching Goal for the Year

I believe one major misstep I had in previous years was not creating an overarching goal. I would create many small specific goals for the year but not have a consistent theme within my goals.

This year, I’m working towards consistency (my 2021 word of the year) because I believe staying consistent plays a major role in success. Being consistent and persistent when working towards goals is so important. I also believe that finding consistency in such an unpredictable time will overall be beneficial.

Distinguish Which Areas of Life You Want to Focus On

Figuring out which areas of life hold importance also plays a key role in succeeding in resolutions. Setting a goal in an area of life that doesn’t hold much value will be much harder than working towards a goal in an area of importance.

This year, I have determined the following areas to be of importance in my life: Faith, Health, Media, School/Career, and Finances.

When picking your areas of life, here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself:

• Which areas of my life do I invest most of my time into?

• Which areas of my life should I be investing in more?

• Which areas of my life are out of balance?

Create Goals Specific to Each Area

After determining my overarching goal and which areas of life I wanted to focus on, I started to really form my goals for the year. I asked myself, “in which ways can I create consistency in each area of my life?”

I wanted to make sure that these goals were also ‘SMART’ goals. These are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. I made three smart goals for each area of my life: two were short-term and one longer-term (by the end of the year.)

For example, for my faith, I set the following goals:

• I would like to spend time with the LORD at least 4 days out of the week.

• I would like to practice a different spiritual discipline a month.

• By the end of the year, I would like to have read/studied 15 books of the Bible.

Visualize Your Goals

I have always been more of a visual learner so visualization is super important for me. This year, I put together a vision board for 2021 to help me visualize my goals. Before making it, I read an article on Oprah Mag that helped me understand why visualization is beneficial:

“According to Psychology Today, mental practices (like visualization) can increase motivation, confidence, and even motor performance. In fact, in one study, researchers found that, in athletes, visualization was almost as effective as physical practice.”

There are two ways I like to visualize my goals. As previously mentioned, (1) through vision or mood boards and (2) through following people that have either achieved my goals or are working towards my goals!

Here is my 2021 vision board! One is for my phone and the other is for my laptop!

Share Your Goals

I’m a person that does well when I’m held accountable. For this reason, the last part of making my resolutions was telling a friend! Sharing goals with friends allows them to understand which goals I’m working towards!

Let’s Recap!

To recap, the 5 steps I took this year goal setting are…

1. Create an Overarching Goal for the Year

2. Distinguish Which Areas of Life You Want to Focus On

3. Create Goals Specific to Each Area

4. Visualize Your Goals

5. Share Your Goals

I’m also making it a point to revisit these goals halfway through the year to see what’s working or not.

I hope this post gave you some ideas and helps you with your goal setting this year! I pray we are all able to achieve our goals and be persistent is our efforts! What’s your word of the year? Leave your answer in the comments! Until next time,