How to Practice Goal Setting For The Month Ahead

It’s almost a new year, if we’re lucky we’ll be back next year with the same thought, process, and hope. On some level most of us will be planning or considering what we’d like to see improve, where we’d like to make new accomplishments and what we are going to do about it all as far as helping the process. There’s no right or wrong way for planning goals that will be consistent for everyone but there are still a few tools that can help and will be worth trying for progress, stamina, and order.

In the paragraphs below, I’m going to share 3 tips that have made a big impact on how to organize your approach to goal setting, methods to build your stamina when your motivation decreases, and how to maintain an eye for incremental progress.

Get Your Overarching Goals First

The first tool that has made a big difference for me is to identify the overarching big umbrella goals first. These are usually goals that sound like “eat healthier”, “get more movement/ fitness”, or “take better care of myself”. Once you have your overarching goal, take a moment to think about why this goal is valuable to you. Why do you want to make more time for improvement in this area of your life? Write your why down on paper. Next, ask yourself “why now?” why is this important right now? Write that down also. Once you have some clarity of why now and why in general, you can start to think of your how. Usually how will and can include many different ways to focus on creating progress and practice for your goals. Grab a sheet of paper and jot down any ideas that come up for your practice.

Break your Goals Down Into smaller Steps Each Week

As you brainstorm different methods to practice to reach your goals consider which feels like the best match and most realistic for your lifestyle. If your goal is to eat healthier consider what are the small steps to do so. Do you need to go grocery shopping more often? Do you need to meal prep more often? Do you need to stop buying certain foods that you often eat in place of veggies? Do you need to talk with your partner or roommates about meal planning? Maybe it’s ideal to get prepared meals or something that will save time but give an advantage. Maybe a healthy eating app is ideal. Maybe it’s time to work with a nutritionist. Think about what works best for your goal. Think about what ideas feel the most sustainable. Write down which ideas also include accountability and support.

Add the steps that align best into your weekly schedule for the weeks of the month ahead. Make the steps very simple and easy to execute. Aim for low traffic days and times. For many this will be on the weekends and during the early morning hours.

Create a Recovery Plan

Sometime you won’t be successful. Sometimes you won’t have motivation or energy. On those days it’s good to create an incremental efforts list. Ask yourself what you can do on these days and times. Maybe instead of being able to eat all the healthy veggies, you can choose to eat a small salad or take your vitamins, or just drink water to hydrate a little bit more. It’s healthy and reasonable to have other ways of working on your goals that feel simple, incremental, and achievable even on your worst days. Prepare a list of possible actions you can take on low motivation/ low energy days. Hold yourself accountable to do those easy actions for your tough days. Also note you can take a day if needed but return to your goals if you want to see progress. Remember life happens to us all but we can also steer our way back to what we value.

MY #1 HOPE:

I hope you enjoyed learning about some of my tips to improve your wellness and health journey. Be sure to share your real life wellness questions below!

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How To Reduce Anxiety + Stress In Real Life

Life can be so stressful. Sometimes people will link stress to the work day, the home work/ task, the holidays, the this, or the that but the stress and anxiety just keep on coming back day after day more or less. Many people understand that we are socially expected to multi-task, have many working projects, to have many activities that will need attendance. So there goes our free time right? We can try and catch our thrills via quick break on social media or via a text or two with friends but for some strange reason, those activities still don’t completely cancel out the overwhelm of the day. The feels of stress and low energy can linger and nag at our inner needs for peace, calm, and ease.

In the paragraphs below, I’m going to support your goals to realistically reduce stress, anxiety and overwhelms symptoms so you can start to access a more tension free ease filled day to day. One thing to keep in mind before we talk tips is that you may see stress and anxiety as completely manageable until it isn’t anymore. The frame I’m using for today’s set of tips is focusing on repair for when stress and anxiety become unmanageable.

The Value Of Slow Self-Care

Have you heard much about slow self-care? It’s an amazing way to stay connected with your mind and body. This is where we can increase personal sensation of being present. Slow self-care is about slowing down and letting our minds wander, and to do our tasks with patient observation and deeper connection of being present. The value of making time daily to slow down, single-task, and also connect with our feelings and inner self while we are attending the day is a powerful way to take back your attention and energy from stress and anxiety symptoms. Slow self-care is meant to be intentional and to support your mindset into a space ease and flow. Try simply doing a 30-minute set of slow self-care at the start of your day each day and notice how you feel. You’ll likely connect with less stress and anxiety and also have increased protection/ resilience.

Talk More About How You’re Really Feeling

There’s something to be said for talking about your feelings. It can be tough to feel your feelings, have your stressful or anxious thoughts and just keep on carrying on. It can help you to feel better by verbally expressing yourself, share that your having a hard time or struggling with anxiety or stress. People you talk with will appreciate you sharing how you authentically feel. Don’t expect them to fix your feelings for you but there’s a good chance you can expect to be heard. It’s nice to be heard isn’t it?

The other benefit of talking about how you feel is that you are empowering yourself by identifying your feelings which also reduces your stress and anxiety. When we identify our feelings we reduce the friction of confusion and overwhelm because we are clear and have isolated the problem. From there our minds tend to start putting together a list of coping tools and actions to take after we identify what’s wrong to help us get back on track.

Take A Break From Friction

It can be tough to say “I quit” or to “give up” but sometimes you must be willing to take a tension free vacation. Taking a tension-free vacation is really about removing any static or tension from your day-to-day experience until you have had enough time to rest and recover. This might mean you let go of activities that take your time or energy like making a fancy breakfast everyday, wearing perfected makeup, spending time on social media, taking incoming calls, responding to texts and anything else that takes time or energy where you might wish to conserve your emotional output.

You may also consider taking a break from a task or project that is important but just not working, not getting better, not clicking. Take a break and get into your slow self-care routine in the mean time. You can get back to your passion projects and feel better as you go forward with some rest and a peace fueled energy.