So almost two months ago, many of us just KNEW that this year was going to be different and this year was the year that we were going to………fill in the blank. I getcha. Each year, we have all of these grand ambitions as to how we are going to change our lives and get more accomplished, spend more time with God, or grow and preserve a bigger garden, to have the best year we can have!
So how are your resolutions working out for you so far this year? Are you nailing them or have you – like every other year – forgotten that you even made resolutions? Hey don’t feel guilty – we have all done this, and we’ve probably done it more years than one.
I want to encourage you that this year can still be different. No, I’m not telling you to make Valentines or St. Patrick’s day resolutions, I want you to take a new look at resolutions and change your thinking just a bit so that 2019 can still turn out to be the year you want it to be!
Resolutions or Goals?
I want to steer you away from making resolutions. Resolutions usually come in the form of “I’m going to do ‘XYZ’ daily or weekly all year. If you don’t keep it for a day or a week, you’ve already failed. Once you fail once, it’s easier to fail twice, and then more often. Sooner or later you give up your resolution altogether, and you stop trying. Resolutions by their very nature set you up to fail.
Goals are different. Goals are something you can shoot for. They are something you want to get done. But let’s say that you have a goal of losing some weight. Even if you don’t lose it all, have you necessarily given up? No, And you are still better off if you’ve lost some weight than if you hadn’t lost any. It’s still a win/win situation.
How do you set goals? 
Get out a pen or pencil and two pieces of paper so that you have plenty of room to write, cross out, and write some more. We’re going to change things up for you so that you can make more progress this year than any year you have in the past! You can SO do this!
1.) Choose up to five areas of your life that you want to improve.
Name up to five areas of your life that you want to improve. For me, it is my Christianity/church life, my family, my business, preparedness, and my health. You don’t have to choose 5 areas, but don’t choose MORE than 5 areas because you’ll spread yourself too thin.
2.) What in each area do you want to improve?
Now choose 1 or two things for each area that you want to improve or change. Do you want to tackle your finances? Maybe you have a sinking fund that needs to be completed. Or perhaps you want or need to pay off some debt. Maybe you want to improve your health by losing weight and walking in a 5 K this year.
No matter what your ideas are, just get them onto paper! That is actually half the battle.
3.) Create SMART goals. 
SMART is an acronym.
S – Specific
Make sure your goals are specific. If you one of the areas you want to work on is your family, then ‘loving your family’ wouldn’t be a specific goal. It doesn’t get into what you’re going to do to love your family. If preparedness is one of the areas which you are seeking to improve, then something along the lines of “I want to be better prepared.” wouldn’t work because it doesn’t tell HOW you want to be better prepared. Do you want to learn to cook using a solar cooker? That’s specific. Do you want to learn how to filter water and set up a water collection system? That’s specific. Make sure your goals are specific.
M – Measurable
Your goal must be measurable. If your goal is to lose weight, how much weight do you want to lose? If your goal is to walk each week, how many times each week do you want to walk? Whatever your goal is, you need a way to know if you hit your goal or not. It must be measurable.
A – Attainable
Attainable and Realistic can easily get confused. Attainable deals with do I have the ABILITY to accomplish the goal. If one of my goals was becoming an Olympic runner, that would NOT be attainable. It’s just not something that I can do. While I love singing, becoming a professional singer also would not be an attainable goal. But writing an encouraging note each week to a different person from my church is attainable.
R – Realistic
While attainable deals with your ABILITY to accomplish your goal, “realistic” instead deals with, can you accomplish the goal in addition to completing your other tasks in life? If one of my goals this year was to read a certain number of books, saying that I wanted to read one book a week, would NOT be realistic for me in my current life situation. Wanting to lose 100 pounds in a year would also NOT be an attainable goal. Wanting to spend an entire hour with each of my children on a daily basis would also NOT be a realistic goal. Reading one book a month IS a realistic goal. As is losing 25 pounds. So is spending 30 minutes one on one with each child a week is also an attainable goal.
T – Timebound
When do you want your goal to be completed by? Is it by December 31st? Is it by a wedding happening in three months? Are you giving yourself two years to complete? What date are you tying to the completion of your goal?
4.) Set Benchmarks
So now you have your goals on paper and they are SMART goals. You need to ask yourself HOW you are going to accomplish these goals. You need to break your goals down into manageable chunks. When I’m working on goals, I like to break them down by month. So for example if my goal is to have 1000 people on my e-mail list by the end of the year, and if I have 500 people on my list, I need to add approximately 50 people a month each month until the end of the year. So my intermediate goal is to add 50 people a month to my list. I now have monthly goals to help reach my goal of having 1000 people on my e-mail list by the end of the year.
5.) Create Action Steps
Now that I have benchmarks in place for each month, I also then need to take it a step further. HOW am I going to 50 people to my e-mail list this month. This will give me specific ways to accomplish that goal. Creating excellent posts is a way to do that, but that’s not a SMART way to accomplish this goal. Writing 3 posts each week is part of a way that I can accomplish this goal. Creating 1-2 printables each month for the printable library is another thing that I can do to help reach that goal.
What About You?
Do you have any failed New Year’s Resolutions that you are going to take and adapt to SMART goals? Did you already set goals for the year instead of resolutions? How are they going? Are you going to tweak your goals at all? Please share with us in the comments, so that we can all be better prepared.
Together lets Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome
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