Setting your 2020 Goals in 5 easy steps

Happy New Year + Welcome to a NEW decade!

Think about the last 10 years of your life, take 30 seconds and reflect on all your accomplishments, failures, successes, new friendships, lost friendships, and ALL the growth you’ve experienced. Planning, setting, and implementing your goals is essential to living an intentional life. During your “past decade reflection” were there any goals that you wished you accomplished?

Before you beat yourself up about it, remember we are in a NEW decade and it’s a little bit of a redo? In the last two years I have accomplished a lot of my goals by holding myself accountable, taking time to plan each goal, reflect on each unsuccessful goal, and accepting when my goals were not in alignment with my current life or lifestyle.

Have you started planning your 2020 goals yet? If you have, I applaud you! If NOT, I will be sharing some of my tips and tricks that I have developed over the last two years. Now let’s get started…

What you will need:

Paper + Pen
Microsoft Excel (free download available upon request)
Quiet time for 30-45 minutes
NO distractions (place your phone in another room)
An open mind + heart

Step One: The Mind Dump

Grab a notebook and a pen to create a “mind dump”. A mind dump is taking ALL your goals and dumping them onto a piece of paper, making your thoughts visible. Feel free to play some relaxing music in the background, this is your moment!

Set a timer for 10-15 minutes. Ask yourself: What do I want this year? What area of my life can be improved? What type of person do I want to be? How can I accomplish growth? Now write down everything, no matter how silly it may sound….write EVERYTHING.

Write down anything you want to manifest!

Step Two: Categorize

Now take a look at all the goals and group them together based on similar categories (no more than 7, ideally). For example: eat healthy and gain 20 pounds can be placed in a HEALTH category. As you group them cross each one off and list under their new category. This should take about 15-20 minutes.

Categories: Health, Fun, Career, Personal Develop. , & Other.

Step Three: Separate goals into Quarters

Break up your year by quarters: Quarter 1 (Jan-March), Quarter 2 (April-June), Quarter 3 (July-Sept.) and, Quarter 4 (Oct.- Dec.).

Take a look at the categorized goals, mark which quarter you want to complete each one in, it can be in multiple quarters.

Step Four: SMART Goals (free excel download available)

Now, you will evaluate each goal and turn them into SMART goals. Using your new categories and goals, place them into an excel sheet. This is where you will need excel. Below is an example of how I format my excel document. If you want a FREE download of this excel format, follow @soulyher on Instagram and DM your email.

What are SMART Goals?

The SMART goals method is a tool to make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Taking each goal through this process will help you formulate a successful goal!

S: Is the goal specific? does it include a who, what,when, how, and why?

M: How will this goal be measured? Will it be done 15 minutes a day? Are you tracking each time it is complete? What tool will you use (an app, etc.? What is the start/end date?

A: Can you achieve this goal, especially by the end date you set? Do you have the tools to complete this goal?

R: Is this goal relevant to your current life? Does this goal align with your energy?

T: How long will it take to complete? Is this a realistic time-frame that you set?

An example of a SMART goal:

Goal: I want to lose weight.

That is very vague. How are you going to do this? What will it look like? How much weight? Why do you want to lose weight? By when? Is there something to look forward to?

Instead you can say:

I will workout 3 times a week (M,W, & F from 6 pm-7 pm) to lose 10 pounds in 3 months for my sister’s wedding.

Step Five: End of Quarter Reflection

Reflection time! After each quarter, I review each goal and I am realistic about why some failed? BUT most importantly I applaud the ones that I completed. I use my excel sheet as a form of reflection for me throughout the quarter.

I hope this was helpful and I wish you all a beautiful, successful, and reflective year! Happy 2020!

Please email soulyher@gmail.com if you have specific questions about this blog, want to chat further about this topic, or you WANT A FREE EXCEL DOWNLOAD? I am happy to help you out.

With peace & love,

Chelsea ❤