Doesn’t that New Year energy feel refreshing? The 1st of January always feels like the first page of a fresh new book. A clean sheet, open to possibilities, dreams, transformation and much more. One of the most valuable lessons life has taught me is that success comes from preparation. So rather than diving into the new year head-first, aimlessly and without any direction, I always take some time to reflect on the previous year before setting achievable personal goals for the year ahead with intention.
The first day of a new year is a powerful time to visualise the life you’ve always dreamed of…and figure out exactly how to get there. But before we leap into the future, it’s important to look back and reflect on your experiences, accomplishments and challenges to figure out what’s important to you and what makes you feel good. This will help guide your path in the future. In this blog post, I’ll share questions to help you reflect on the previous year, explore how to establish your core values and goals and finally my tips on how to set personal goals and intentions.
Reflecting on the Previous Year
Looking back is underrated. I often find that we’re so obsessed with looking forward and, therefore, focusing on what we don’t have (yet) that we neglect to look back at how far we’ve come and the lessons we’ve learnt along the way. Socrates famously mused that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ and I’d have to agree with him.
Reflection helps you gain insight into your experiences, accomplishments and challenges. It also helps you to identify patterns and trends in your life and figure out areas that you want to improve. Here are 10 questions I ask myself to help reflect on the previous year:
- What were my biggest accomplishments?
- What were my biggest challenges?
- What did I learn from my experiences?
- What relationships were most important to me?
- How did I spend my time?
- What did I enjoy doing the most?
- What did I want to achieve but didn’t?
- What were the highlights of my year?
- What were the low points of my year?
- What do I want to carry forward from the previous year?
Establishing Your Core Values and Personal Goals
Once you’ve reflected on the previous year, it’s much easier to focus on what is important to you and what will form the cornerstones of the year ahead. Your core values are the beliefs and principles that are most important to you. They help guide your decisions and actions, helping you to prioritise what’s most important in your life.
Your goals build on your core values. They are specific and measurable actions you want to take to achieve your vision for the future. While a vision board can help you visualise your core values, goals will help you make them a reality.
Here are the steps I take to help establish core values and goals:
Identify your core values: What stood out to you during your reflection? Write down the values that jumped out to you. These may be things like compassion, honesty, creativity or wellness.
Create a vision board: I love creating vision boards on Pinterest, they help me visualise my ideal life. Some questions I think about while putting together my vision board include; Who do I want to become in the next year? What do I want my life to look like? What’s important to me?
Set specific, measurable goals: Once you’ve created your vision board, reflect on how you’ll get there. Your goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Prioritise your goals: A long list of goals is daunting so break them down and prioritise them. Ask yourself; what are the quick wins? What is most important to you? What will make you the happiest?
Tips on setting personal goals and achieve them
It’s usually at this stage that life starts to feel daunting. Just remember: you are worthy of living your dream life and you’re capable of achieving it. It just takes a little organisation, motivation and some action. Here are some of my tips to help you set personal goals and achieve them:
Focus on the process, not the outcome: How many times have you heard the saying: it’s not the destination, it’s the journey? It took me a while to realise this! It’s helpful to write goals that focus on a specific behaviour within your control. For example, instead of setting a goal to lose x kilos, set a goal to exercise three times a week or walk 10,000 steps a day.
Break down your goals into smaller, achievable steps: A huge goal can feel overwhelming. But 8 small steps towards that goal? Definitely doable! I want you to dream big, huge even. The best way to achieve that big dream is to take small steps towards it and celebrate each milestone along the way. If your goal is to save £x by the end of the year, break this down into a saving goal each month to make it feel more achievable and actionable.
In 365 days, you could be living the life you’ve dreamed of, whether you want to improve your health, build stronger relationships or advance your career. I hope you’ve found this post useful and that it helps you set personal goals to help you on the way to your dream life.
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