It’s coming up on the New Year – it’s a time of reflection on the old and planning for the new.  I keep a document on my computer that contains my personal goals. 

At the beginning of the year, I pull it out and review them to see if anything has changed: 

• can I cross some off? (Because they are no longer important or because they have been accomplished) 
• is there anything new to add? 
• Have I made progress?

The answer to these questions is invariably, “yes”. Maybe not the progress I’d hoped, but I always make progress.

Goal Planning

The categories I choose to track are:

• Personal growth
• Health/wellness
• Family/relationships
• Career
• Finance
• Lifestyle

Under each category are separate individual lines like: take up yoga, learn to dance, start a blog, and learn French.

Parlez Vous Francais?

Well, I don’t. Not yet anyway.  But, I’m making progress. I signed up with Duolingo last year and for a full year I have been logging in and taking my courses. 

My stats:

• Practiced: 309 days for a total of 89 hours
• Completed 1324 lessons
• Learned 4634 words

I’m proud of that.  I feel accomplished when I can see progress toward my goals.

Progress Bar

I think it’s important to have goals that can be measured or tracked.  It provides additional motivation to reach your goals.

Some people keep journals. I’ve seen a whole lot of Pinterest posts related to bullet journals and my local Michaels has an aisle dedicated to journaling – offering all kinds of preprinted inserts and stickers to spice up your tracking. I admire people who have the ability to stick to those kinds of tracking planners.  

Dance like nobody’s watching 

However, there are items on my list that I haven’t made progress on: like take up yoga and learn to dance.  

Our days are like a balancing act – we all juggle a variety of balls – time, money, and commitments.  (Note to self: add learn to juggle to my goal list) It is in our down time that we have the opportunity to tackle new goals and it is important to prioritize our list to ensure that we are satisfied with the outcomes. 

That prioritization also helps you to realize you don’t have to beat yourself up if you haven’t completed or even started a goal. Cut yourself some slack – in 2019 it wasn’t a priority… but, in 2020? Maybe it will be.

Compassion

And, so I get to the point of the drawing… show yourself some compassion. Give yourself a break from the litany of “not good enough” messages in your head.  You’re making progress.  And that’s awesome.

Maybe take up yoga. 2020 seems like the perfect time.