The year is coming to an end and there is something on my mind… GOALS!!! If you didn’t know, I am one of those people who is a little obsessed with setting goals. We have 4 poster boards full of goals right now on our walls… Yikes.. This last December as Logan and I took time to think about where we wanted 2016 to take us, we each took one poster board and wrote goals for ourselves about the business. For our personal goals, we drew a line down the middle of one poster board to just share it. In August of this year, we decided to make some 2 year big goals and added another poster board to our walls… Yep, I told you it was a problem.

For our business goals, I set 26 and for personal goals I set 14. 30 goals for 2016 to be accomplished by me. That’s a lot of goals. An extremely overwhelming number if you spend too much time looking at them. I remember at the beginning of this year making tally marks next to goals that I was “counting” and thinking that I was never going to be able to reach all of these goals. Other days I felt consumed by this need to find ways to cross things off of that list and I would just stare at it, trying to come up with ways to get it all done. Out of the total, I crossed out just over half for the year- with most of those being from the business goal sheet.

I went over my goals earlier this week, I put boxes around the ones I didn’t reach and asked myself why I set those goals and how I felt for not reaching them. The biggest thing I noted about my personal goals, was that I did not put enough effort or importance on those goals to make them a priority in my life. The ones that I didn’t cross off for the business are ones that would have been fun to finish but definitely not necessary.

Even though I did not make it through all my goals for the year, I’m still planning on setting goals for next year. But this year I’m going to keep a few things in mind when setting my goals that I learned as I went over last year’s goals. First, don’t overwhelm yourself. Don’t write down every single thing you think of- trust me no one needs 30 goals for a year. Second, make sure your list is full of goals that stretch you but don’t leave you feeling defeated. Goals are supposed to inspire us to live better and happier lives, not bring us down! Third, don’t set goals to be like someone else. Often I feel like we get too caught up in the act of comparing our lives to others and wishing our lives were like someone else’s. Do not focus your goals on striving to make it like someone else. Set goals that help you find the happiest and best version of your own story and life! Fourth, look back to the goals from 2016 and see what worked and did not. Seek to improve your goal setting by not making the same mistakes you did last year! For example, set goals that can be tracked or give yourself a deadline* to finish it by instead of leaving it up to when you have any sort of open time! Fifth, now that I just told you to give yourself deadlines, don’t be too hard on yourself when it comes to your goals. We are not perfect and will not always accomplish and finish everything, but we can try to improve daily. Maybe you want to complain less, but today was a really bad day and you opened your mouth a few times to complain. That doesn’t mean all hope is lost and that you can’t come have a day full of no complaints tomorrow!

I’ve already been working on a rough draft of my goals and I’m keeping it to 10 business and personal goals this year!! I’ll keep you updated on what those goals are once 2017 hits!!