We made it! Welcome to 2022! I’m so excited to be back with you podcasting.

I have a great set of episodes coming up, and lots of great plans for how we can grow together in 2022. How I can support you. But today I thought the best way to start our year off together is by talking about those new year’s resolutions, your goals for the year.

[00:00:29] Have you set them yet? Are you excited about them? Are you nervous about keeping them? Have you been avoiding the topic altogether? Today we are diving into all things goal setting and new year’s resolution. So what do you say let’s get started?

[00:01:38] Now friend, if you are not already a part of our MilSpouse Mastermind Facebook Community, I would love for you to come jump inside. This is where we can continue the conversation, where we can receive additional encouragement and support. And we can cheer each other on as we pursue our goals in 2022.

If you’re not already a part of our group, you can just head over to milspousemastermind.com/community. And that will take you directly to the link. Or you can just look up milspouse mastermind community in the Facebook search bar and it should pull up the group for you. I can’t wait to see you inside the group!

[00:02:19] Let’s start today by talking about new year’s resolutions. Have you set some kind of goal or resolution for the year? I looked up some brief statistics. According to finder.com, in 2021, 74% of adults made some kind of resolution.

The top categories were health, career, self-improvement, family and love. Now can you guess which one was number one? Yup. Health. Health related goal were the number one category for new year’s resolutions. But here’s the most interesting part of the survey, to me at least.

The younger you are, the more likely you were to make a resolution. 88% of millennials made a resolution, compared with 61% of baby boomers. And what also declined with age, in the survey, was the belief that you will accomplish your resolution. As we get older, we are less likely to believe that will actually accomplish the resolution that we set for ourselves. I don’t know if that’s just wisdom, after many years of trying and failing to accomplish goals, or whether we just give up after a while.

[00:03:58] But the other interesting piece of this particular survey was that the most common reason given for not accomplishing a resolution, was lack of willpower. We have this idea that if we just had more willpower, more resolve, we could make things happen. We think it’s a problem of our ability to have enough grit and willpower. Or we think we’re too lazy.

[00:04:26] What if, instead, the reasons we don’t achieve our goals are because we’re not setting the right goals for us in the fresh place, or we don’t have a foolproof plan to accomplish those goals? What if it’s not a matter of willpower? What if it’s a matter of setting the right goals for us and then actually making progress on those goals?

What if we have a plan to help us get where we want to go? Because I know, for me, I can want something. But if I don’t actually have a plan to get me there, it’s not going to happen.

So today I want to talk about how we can begin to rethink our new year’s resolutions. And I’m going to give you the big picture today of seven steps you can take to change the way that you do your new year’s resolutions.

And then next week, in part two of this series, we’re going to get into the nitty gritty of what it looks like to actually set growth goals for you AND how you make progress on those goals.

The big thing that I want to communicate right now is that it doesn’t matter whether you’ve done your new year’s resolutions already or not. I know so many people place so much power on January 1st. But in order to do that, we have to back way up and be setting goals for our year back in December or even November.

The truth is that so many of us have so many other things going on as the holidays approach. There are so many events, and so many things that pop up last minute. I know that was true in my own life. Despite wanting to carve out time to reflect on the last year and set goals for the next year, so much happened.

And so we feel like we get to the very end of the Christmas season. We have a couple of days before the new year starts. And then we’re scrambling to try to figure out, okay, what goals do I want to set? And I have to be ready to go into start pursuing them January one.

But I haven’t done the work to figure out, is this the right goal? Am I going to be able to make progress on this goal? What do I need to make progress on this goal? If I haven’t done the work ahead of time, then my goal is not going to stick. The goals that we want to stick have to become a part of our habits and routines and systems. We need systems to support us to accomplish our goals. We need an action plan, and if we don’t have that, then we are not likely to achieve our goals. Because we’re never going to get there on sheer willpower alone.

[00:07:34] So I just want to eliminate this myth right now and say, it’s not a matter of willpower. It’s about setting the right goals, having an action plan, and having the right systems to support us, to make progress on our goals.

So if you have not already put together goals, that’s absolutely okay! In fact, I would say that’s GOOD because we need to make sure that we have adequate time to reflect on our year, to set the right goals for us, and to come up with a plan of action so that we can make progress on our goals.

[00:08:12] The best year, for me, was when I didn’t even sit down and come up with my plan for the year until February. I had a crazy busy Christmas. I had a crazy busy January. And I knew I wasn’t going to get that time and space I needed to really sit down and reflect until February. But I knew that if I could hold off until early February, I was going to have a specific time period where I didn’t have kids running around and people interrupting me all the time.

[00:08:41] I had that quiet space to actually sit down and plan out my year. And you know what? I was able to make goals, and make progress on those goals, because I carved out that time. So it does not have to be January one. I just want to dispel that myth.

So what we’re going to do is make all of this month about tools to help you as you plan out your year, so that you can have your best year to date.

[00:09:12] My whole goal is to help you, to make sure that you are able to make progress on your goals as a military spouse, despite what happens. Despite what life throws your way. We’re going to talk about these things ALL month long.

And while I’m going to give you plenty of helpful nuggets of information along the way, at the end of the month, we’re going to come together. I’m going to go live in our Facebook group and give you the exact steps that you can go through to reflect on your year, to plan and to set intentions for how you want to grow this year. Who you want to be and what steps you can take to make progress on those big dreams, goals, and plans.

Because I want to see you thrive as a military spouse! I want you to be able to care for yourself, to be able to care for those you are in relationship with, and to be able to pursue your purpose in this season of life. So let’s talk about seven steps to get you started on this journey. to change the way we do new years.resolutions.

1. 1. KNOW WHERE YOU WANT TO GO

The first step is to know where you want to go. This is time that you need to take, to figure out what you’re trying to do and why.  What is your vision for what you want to accomplish? Who you want to be in one year from now? just start there. One year from today. How do you want to be showing up?

We have to have a direction before we can set goals. If we’re just setting goals with no real direction, we’re not going to make progress on our goals. So we need to know the direction we want to go in. Who do we want to bet?  How do we want to grow? wWhat are we wanting to move towards in the next 365 days?

1. 2. SET SMART GOALS

The second step is to set smart goals. You may or may not have heard of this term before. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound. So specific. We need to make sure the goals that we set are not too broad. They need to be specific. We need to be able to get our hands around knowing what this goal is. It also has to be a goal that is measurable. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. So if we don’t have a specific, measurable statistic, it’s really hard to know if we are making progress. If we are accomplishing that goal.

[00:12:05] Is it achievable? Is this even possible? If your dream a year from now is to be living on a ranch, but your husband is active duty and you’re about to PCS to a new duty station, then this goal is not achievable in the next year. It has to be achievable. And part two of this, is it realistic. No! In this season of life, living on a ranch a year from now, is probably not be realistic. Maybe ten years down the road, but not in the next year. The last one is time-bound. When will you accomplish this goal?

So let’s talk through a couple of examples, so you can get an idea of this looks like. Let’s say I want to lose weight. Number one. I need to know where I want to go and why. Why do I want to lose weight? So let’s say, I determine why I lose weight. Now I’m going to set my smart goal.

[00:13:04] Is it specific? Well, losing means less than, but we don’t have a specific amount. It’s not specific enough. It isn’t measurable. I mean, I guess if technically, if you last one pound, that would be losing weight. But that might not be what you have in mind. So if, instead, you say, I want to lose 10 pounds or 15 pounds or whatever that number is, then you have a more specific and measurable goal.

[00:13:34] Now, the next question to say is this achievable? Is it possible? Is it realistic? So yes, this goal is possible for me and yes, that’s probably a realistic goal, knowing what I have on my plate right now. I need look at what’s on my schedule. What’s coming up. What’s happening in the next three, six, twelve months. And based on that, is this realistic goal for me?

Absolutely. Now I’m going to set a time related goal. When will I accomplish this goal? is it going to be 365 days from now? Is it going to be in the next six months? So if I say I want to lose 10 pounds by September. Now we have a SMART goal. And then I can set a plan to move towards that goal.

[00:14:27] Let’s take another example. Something that I talked about last week in my bonus episode, wanting to read more books. Is that specific? Well more is not really specific. And it’s not really measurable because first, you have to know how many books you read the year prior if you want to read MORE books.

So a better goal would be to say, I’m going to read 12 books this year. Is that achievable? Is that realistic? Okay, maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. You need to look at your schedule. You need to look at what’s coming up. You need to look at how you’re going to incorporate that into your life. So, for you, it may be realistic and achievable to say, I can read 12 books this year.

[00:15:17] It may not be realistic and achievable to read 200 books. Then we’re going to say in this year. So that that’s okay. That’s time bound. So let’s talk about a really SMART goal. I want to read 12 non-fiction, self-improvement books in the next 365 days. That is a very SMART goal. So the more that we make this specific measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely, the better.

1. 3. SET GROWTH GOALS

[00:15:53] The third step is to set growth goals. We’re going to talk about this in much greater detail next week, but the idea of growth goals came from my own journey of asking, How do I set goals? What are the right goals for me? What should I be moving towards? Because I really felt a little lost and I didn’t know what I needed to be setting goals towards.

You know, we have these common categories – our health goals, our money goals, our career goals, our self-improvement, family, love. All of those categories from the survey are good things, but it kind of feels a little bit willy nilly, like we’re just kind of pulling goals out of a hat.

[00:16:42] We’re basing our goals on what other people are doing or achieving. And we want the same thing they have, instead of making sure that our goals are in line with who we are and who we want to be. So the better plan is to really assess and create growth goals based on that. And so next week, I’m going to teach you exactly how to do that.

1. 4. CREATE A GROWTH PLAN

[00:17:09] But after we have set our growth goals, we want to create a plan for how we’re going to make progress on those goals. What are we actually going to do to make those goals a reality? It’s great to have a goal. But unless we have a plan to get there, we probably won’t get there. Or we can get there or get part of the way there based on sheer willpower alone.

[00:17:37] But the better plan is to say, okay, how am I going to fit this into my, my daily, weekly, monthly schedule? So we have to have a plan for how we’re going to make progress on those goals. What action steps are going to lead us to those goals?

1. 5. PRIORITIZE WHAT MATTERS MOST

[00:18:05] We have to prioritize what matters most, because life is busy. Life will pull us in many different directions and we will get overwhelmed really easily, unless we are clear on what matters most for us in this season. So we need to be able to know what matters. What we are prioritizing for the season so that we can make decisions based on what’s most important.

[00:18:31] And what’s not really important, right. That’s going to change season to season, depending on what your life looks like. If you have littles at home, if you have a newborn baby, if your kids are in school, if you are planning for a PCs, whatever your life is looking like right now. Then make a priority list of what matters most in the next 90 days. How am I going to prioritize what I am moving towards?

1. 6. SET A SCHEDULE

And then number six, we’re going to set a schedule to support our priorities. We need to know what our priorities are, make sure those get put into our schedule, and then set a schedule that allows us to prioritize what matters most and move towards accomplishing our growth goals.

1. 7. CREATE HABITS THAT SUPPORT YOUR PROGRESS

[00:19:22] And then the last piece of the puzzle is developing the habits and routines to support our growth. We want to make doing the right thing, the easy choice. We want to make it simple to do what we want to do. We want to have these habits and routines that support who we’re trying to be and how we’re trying to show up.

[00:19:47] So we need to begin to establish these healthy habits and repeat routines to support our progress. So let’s recap really quick. The seven steps to setting better goals and new year’s resolutions for ourselves. Number one, we need to know the direction we want to go. And where do we want to go? And what are we trying to accomplish?

[00:20:12] We need to set smart goals, goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. We want to set growth goals, the right goals for us. Goals that help us become who we’re meant to be, that are in alignment with what we value and what we are meant to do, our purpose in life. And then we need a plan for how we’re going to move forward.

[00:20:43] We need to number five, prioritize what matters most numbers. Set our schedules to support those priorities. And then number seven, develop the habits and routines to support our progress. So if you have not already set your resolutions for the year, then I encourage you to just take some time, and to know that you don’t need to figure it out right away.

[00:21:12] If you’ve already set some goals, but you’re not sure how to achieve it, keep listening to this episode. Or not this episode, but the future episodes, because we’re going to be talking through what it looks like to actually set and make progress on your goals. And finally, I have a bonus episode coming out later this week, on setting a word of the year.

 If you have not already set a word of the year, this is kind of a stand alone exercise. But I think it’s really great, because it can also help us prioritize what matters most, and give us focus and direction for our year. So if you do not already know how to do that, that’s what we’ll be talking about on Thursday’s episode.

[00:22:00] I can’t wait to share that information with you. I am so excited for you. I hope and pray that you have an amazing 2022. Until next time, may you live filled, fueled and full of joy!