You ready to do this? Ready to sit and declare through your words and create goals in order to actually become the person you want to be in 2023? Friends lets do the actual thing! Forget the fear of failure, forget the what ifs or all the bajillion excuses we give ourselves on the daily and actually take the time to plan your goals for the new year. Because you know what – you are every single bit worth it! You can do this. Your goals – you can achieve them. The thing you want more than anything else in the world – yes it is possible. Believing in all those things and MORE for you this new year! What do you say want to set some goals and plant the seed for our dreams this New Year? 

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How to Plan Ahead for the New Year

We have made it. The end of another year and are so close to the start of another one. Happy almost New Year! Hopefully the week between Christmas and New Years have brought you ample time to reflect and reset before the start of the New Year. There are so many wonderful things to do during this slow week of the year to prepare your heart and mind for the brand new year! I am so excited for all things life, hope, excitement, and a new year full of all things joyful.

I am going to share with you practical tips for setting goals in order to help you plan for the New Year to be successful. Planning for the New Year to help you set the goals to live your best life in the calendar year. My desire to talk all things goal setting, planning, and vision board creating in order to give you the tools you need to actually live the life you truly desire in the new year! Yes it is possible. Yes you are worth it. You can do this. 

Previous Years of Goal Planning 

In the past, I would create the most audacious goals and fail tremendously as I would fall incredibly short and ignore the goals I created in the first place. Since then, I have focused a lot on refining my goals through creating actionable steps and realistic goals that are attainable. In doing this, I have found more success in getting to the places I want to go! I have learned quite a bit through this process of what works and what doesn’t work in creating goals and planning for the New Year. It is through this goal setting process, that I have learned helpful planning and goal setting tips that I hope can unlock your potential for great success in the year to come! 

Planning for the New Year: SMART Goals 

SMART goals: 

S – specific 

M – measurable 

A – achievable 

R – realistic 

T –  timely 

The very first step to writing a good goal for your goal planning for the New Year is to ensure that your goal is a SMART goal. You may be familiar with SMART goals. As SMART goals are intended to set you up for success. When planning out goals it is important to think through things realistically. In order to be successful, your goals need to be specific. You need to know exactly what that goal is and clearly define it. Next, the goal must be measurable. A goal needs to be something that can be measurable in order to know if it was successful. 

The third component of a SMART goal is for it to be achievable. It is necessary to create a goal that can be achievable. Dream big, but be realistic in terms of what can actually happen. Create a goal that is realistic, as well as a goal that is timely. Assign a date to your goal so you know when that will be completed by. Through assigning a date and a time to your goals, that is what is going to provide the framework for success. 

Forming Your Goals in Planning for the New Year 

As you sit and reflect and self-assess, and evaluate within your own heart the things going well and the things that are not going well, you may establish a list of goals of the things you hope to achieve. Maybe it is more of a dream, or a vision, or a reality that you desire to come true for you and your life. Whatever it is, you start to have specific occurrences in your mind and usually those thoughts form our goals. 

Most of our life, our culture and society emphasizes the importance of setting big goals at the beginning of every new year. The focus of planning for the New Year turns into incredibly big and ambitious goal setting. Most of the time this plan for over ambitious goal setting is rooted in the expectation of perfection with very little room for failure. 

How to Set Up Your Goals For Success 

Setting goals is great and all – until you fall incredibly short and start to value yourself according to your fault. That is when we have a problem. As powerful as goal setting is,  if it is not done the right way it can lead to potential disaster. Instead, shift your goal planning more into a conversation with your mind on how do I want to feel this year?

1. Focus on a feeling 

My very first step for successful goal planning for the New Year is to actually not goal plan. Instead, focus on a feeling. How do you want to feel in the coming year?  I get it goals are great and fun and when we tie a number to a goal in can be incredibly restricting and binding. So instead shift your focus on a feeling. How do you want to feel this year. How do you want to be? How do you want to feel physically? How do you want to feel emotionally? How do you want to feel mentally? Focus on those things – and then think through the plan of what it will take to get there? 

Do you want to feel more alive? Great, what are the steps to take to do so. 

Do you want to feel more rested? Amazing – how are you going to do that?

Do you want to feel more present/ Perfect – what are those steps going to be?

Focus on HOW you want to feel and then plan through the steps you are going to take in order to get there! 

Based on how you desire to FEEL this year – use that feeling to guide your vision. 

Based on your vision, rooted in how you truly desire to feel – how are you going to live out each and every day.

2. Break down your goal into super tactical steps.

The second step for goal planning for the New Year is to break down your goal into super tactical steps. Again, we are talking about this goal as more of a feeling. How do you want to feel this year? Do you want to feel healthier? Do you want to feel more joy? Or maybe you want to be more dedicated to your commitments. Whatever it is, whatever that feeling is, focus on that feeling turning into the actual goal you are hoping to accomplish. 

Then, divide that feeling turned goal into super tactical steps of what the actual actions are you need to take, in order to get there! Create little tiny actions that will result in a big impact and allow you to reach even closer to your dreams. Do another brain dump to see what things need to happen for you to feel the way you want to feel. Start to put pen to paper in order to know what it is going to take in order to get there.

3. Focus on creating habits 

The third step in order to be successful in your goal setting and planning for the New Year is to focus on creating habits. This is where success can be found. All the goddess is in store for reaching and becoming the person we desire to be. Goals are achievable when we focus on creating habits. Shift this idea of creating goals into forming habits to allow yourself to reach the goals you desire to achieve. Based on that feeling, what are the little things that need to be done consistently in order to get there. What are the little things that need to be done consistently, within my daily and weekly schedule, within our own routines, in order to make sure this becomes a reality. 

Habit Tracking 

One of the best ways to do this is through habit tracking. Habit tracking is a successful tool that Chelsi Jo Moore, owner of the Systemize Your Life Academy and Systemize Your Life Podcast does, is habit tracking. Chelsi does this through her weekly planner and creates a little checklist of the things she wants to do that week and marks it off in the planner. Draw little check boxes next to the habit you want to implement during the week.

The best part about this is there is freedom. There is room for life to happen. No matter how great our intentions are, life happens and things can get messy. That is the best part about habit tracking is there is room for life to get messy. There is freedom to be okay when things don’t happen according to plan. Instead, you look back at the previous week and see what worked well, and what didn’t work. This allows you to work towards reaching the goals you desire to accomplish. Focus on creating habits to get you there.  By creating habits that align with how you want to feel, you are in line for success.

4. Visualize it 

The fourth step for setting and creating a goal for success in planning for the new year is to visualize it. Focus on what that is going to actually look like and make it something you can physically see. Create imagery for what that is going to look like. Whether that is through words in your journal and affirming what that will look like. Or creating a 2023 Vision Board on Pinterest and pinning pins that you want to aspire to. You can even go old fashioned and find magazine scraps to assemble in your planner from an actual magazine.

Whichever way, put actual life to your vision. Allow your dreams and desires to come to life. When you can see them in front of your very own eyes, they become living. Your dreams actually become possible! This is so important in setting your goals and planning for the New Year.

Other Important Reminders in Planning for the New Year 

It can be so encompassing at the start of a new year. There is so much pressure we put on ourselves. No matter how hard we try, we can still create expectations for perfection, as well as unrealistic expectations for how we live life. Therefore, a few key things to keep in mind as we plan for the New Year, have grace upon grace upon grace. Extend grace to yourself and a freedom to yourself to be who you are in any given moment. And to be okay with it. To give yourself grace for when you fall short, because you will. And that is okay. Everyone falls short. When you fall short that gives you room to stand up and stand up in a more proper and more correct form. 

Another important reminder for the New Year is to give yourself freedom from comparison. To not worry about how the world does it, but instead focus on what you need in each and every moment. Release the expectation of perfection. We all will have moments where we are fully present in our weakness and that is absolutely okay. That is what makes us human. There are going to be days that will be hard and seasons that will be rough. However those days and season, they do not define you! They will most certainly refine you, but they do not define you. 

Be expectant. Be excited. And practice a heart of gratitude throughout it all! 

Cheering You on in the New Year! 

I am cheering you on so big for this New Year. I am here for you, standing in your corner and cheering you on for all the success as you plan through your hopes and dreams. As you sit and reflect in your planning for the New Year, I hope you take the time to focus in on how you want to feel in the New Year. Doing the steps it takes, to create the little tiny habits, to visualize it, in order to reach that feeling of who you want to become. 

Not every single day is going to be Pinterest perfect, Instagram worthy, sunshine and rainbows, glorious BEST Day. But despite all the real, hard moments of life that happen daily, despite those things, you can find joy, and hope, and moments of life, even when you have to look really hard, and it is that which makes every single day worth celebrating! Its that which makes every single day worth declaring as the Best Day!