How to Establish and Organize Your Goals in 5 Easy Steps
“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.”
– Anonymous
Goal setting is not just for January’s New Year’s resolutions. Any time you want to change your reality, you can. All it takes is a little patience, practice, and purpose. Achieving your dream reality requires some organization and planning. Crafting the life you want for yourself should be a thoughtful process. One that is built to be as unique as your needs and goals. A process no one can create for you. Therefore this letter is to be a guideline to support your learning curve into self-investment. it doesn’t have to be hard; establishing and organizing your goals can be done in five easy steps.
For those of us who have the greatest of intentions trying to remember all the appointments, birthdays, projects, and dinner plans that come our way during the day, but seem to lose grip of them by the end, know that you are not alone. Social life aside, between managing a household, pet appointments, kids, meal prepping, and errands there is an unending supply of activities to keep up on during the day. At one time or another, we have all forgotten an appointment, missed a birthday, or became so overwhelmed by the sheer number of activities to do that we just gave up and procrastinated instead.
Though perhaps not a universal practice among schools, there is a reason they tend to give out planners at the beginning of the year. The school wants to set you up for the best and highest level of success possible, and they know organization and time management are the keys to achievement. I would challenge anyone to try to make it through the schooling system, any schooling system, without the use of any planner or organizing method, and see if they kept their sanity intact, or, their grades at the least.
Unfortunately, the older we get, the more serious it becomes to maintain a proper hold on our lives. Missing your spouse’s birthday, forgetting the deadline for a work project, or failing to remember to pay your rent on time can have detrimental effects on your life.
Beyond not forgetting things, organization can do so much more for your life. When you have a goal like many people do December through January, maintaining focus and setting a plan is what can drive a dream into becoming a definable, achievable goal. Unless you have superhuman devotion to your goal and an unbending will to see it through cold turkey, you may be setting yourself up for heartbreak when you struggle to maintain those high standards.
Let’s say you are a young woman who wants to inspire other women to find self-actualization through self-investment, fostering positivity and wellness. How would you go about doing that?
One way would be to start a Pinterest account using images to convey your ideas. You could create self-investment products to share your hard-learned wisdom and self-investment journey with the world. Or, you could be super cool and start a blog called In-nested and start to build an empire built on learning, wellness, and self-investment. The thing is, there are a multitude of ways you can impact the world and achieve your dreams but they boil down to two very simple actions:
Firstly, define what your dreams are, I can help with that here. Secondly, dream achievement truly lies in the actual hands-on work it takes to make them come to fruition.
So, you have your idea or something close to it, and you want to implement it, but how?
You may feel your dream is too big and scary to do on your own. Perhaps you have never done anything like it, and your friends and family don’t understand the importance of this new journey you want to undertake. Maybe you only have a general idea of what you want to do and are struggling to find the exact path you should take. Or, you know exactly what you want and just don’t know how to get started.
Here are my 5 easy steps to go establish and organize your goals:
Step 1: Say Goodbye To Fear
Fear has no place on your journey to becoming your best self, living out your dream life, and doing what makes you happiest. No matter what anyone else says or thinks, your goals are yours alone and no one has the right to say otherwise.
Doing something new naturally brings about those feelings of fear and uncertainty. The problem with listening to those fears is once they’ve got you, they hold you tight and don’t want to let go. As children, we hold no fear. Bravely playing, dreaming, and believing we can do anything without a trace of doubt. Take a page from your former self. Believe in those ridiculous dreams, live with unabashed confidence, and change the way you define failure.
The fear of failure so often holds back dreamers from actualizing their goals into reality. Your goals have just as much merit as the next person’s, and no one can make you feel ashamed without your active participation. If you decide “I am going after this no matter what,” that unwavering confidence can quiet even the harshest critics. Critics don’t live our lives and cannot appreciate our goals like we can. So if they aren’t a part of the journey, why listen to them? A lesson can be found at the end of each “failure,” and use those times as learning opportunities. And feel proud of yourself for trying.
Step 2: Define a Direction
You need to know what direction you are taking to know where you are going. If you already know exactly what the goal is, great! Keep it at the forefront of everything you do. If you don’t know exactly what it is you should be doing, don’t stress.
2A:
Think about what it is you already enjoy, the things that seem effortless and fulfilling, and do more of that! We tend to overcomplicate things, trying to create and inflate a dream we don’t even believe in. This can happen when you adopt the dreams of others. Parents, siblings, and friends can all affect the way we see our goals. Comparing our path or the path we “should be on” with where we naturally and organically find joy. Keep it simple and slow, Where do you already find fulfillment?
2B:
Evaluate what areas in life you want to improve, and start visualizing what that improvement looks like. You may be starting this organizational goal-setting journey because you feel unfulfilled and unhappy. In those instances, goal setting becomes easy. The pain points of your life will be sticking out like a sore thumb. Find that sore spot and follow it. Look at what behaviors support that unhappiness. Begin to assess where you can swap out behaviors and start taking reasonable baby steps away from the pain.
2C:
Gauge the long-term effects of those two things together. If your behaviors changed is that the kind of life you want to live in the next 5, or 10 years? If yes, you have your direction. If not, reread this section and try again, looking for patterns and cycles that emerge in your thinking, something is likely to pop out.
Step 3: Prepare For Changes
It can be daunting to dream big in and of itself, let alone find the courage to start chasing after what you want. I know I have big dreams for this blog, but I recognize they all won’t happen in one day. I still have a lot of learning and growing to do before I reach the end outcome. Even then, as I continue to learn, new paths may arise that better fit what my goals evolve into.
When you start to brainstorm your new trajectory, make room in your headspace for evolution. A goal you have today might change tomorrow. Goals have to have room to breathe and develop. You are different than you were a month ago, a year ago, your dreams must also evolve as you do.
Saying goodbye to what you thought was your goal to make way for something that feels better is a good thing. It is a dream maturing, and with that maturity comes a deeper sense of purpose, peace, and fulfillment.
Step 4: Break It Down
Overwhelm and perfectionism are the leading dream killers in the self-investment world. Trying to bite off more than your current situation can chew is a recipe for burnout.
Take your goal and break it up into manageable pieces. Start to define the smaller steps it will take to reach that goal. When baking a cake you don’t usually throw all the ingredients in the pan shove it in the oven and expect a perfect cake. There are smaller steps you have to take to get to confectionary excellence. Steps like getting the ingredients at the grocery store, driving them home, taking out only what you need, finding an apron…it goes on.
The idea is, that there are always minor tasks you can do to make your goals more manageable. Building new habits, unlearning negative behaviors, and asking yourself those probing questions, there is always something to work on. Going step by step, day by day, taking your time to get acquainted with the new life you are building. It is during this time that imposter syndrome can emerge. As you begin to make progress it can feel uncomfortable.
In those times keep going, and fight the urge to quit out of unbelief that you are worth the effort because you are.
Step 5: Set An End Date
Lastly, you need an end date for your goal, otherwise, there is no personal accountability keeping you on track. That is why every year when January comes around people set the same goals each year: lose weight, get a promotion, run a marathon, etc. But never seem to reach it even though they promise themselves this will be the year it gets done. Don’t fall into the trap of “I’ll do it later.” No. You want this. You made the goal for a reason, Don’t cheat yourself out of success due to inconsistency. Set a date, write it down, and work on making it happen!
We all have excuses, we all have responsibilities. I would only ask you this:
When do your goals, and your dreams become your responsibility?
It probably won’t be easy, just being honest with you. There was a lot I had to overcome to get the courage to start this blog.
“Perhaps no one will read it.”
“People will criticize me for trying something new and imperfect.”
“I will be wasting my time and end up with nothing to show for it.”
Doubt is normal when stepping out of your comfort zone, but it can only affect you if you allow it to. At some point, you have to just JUMP and hope for the best. You don’t have to have it all figured out on day one, that is where growth and life experience come into play. You change as time goes on and so must your goals, adaptation is nothing to be afraid of.
Living out your dreams, and building a life you want to live is one of the greatest achievements you can make because it is something that is uniquely and personally yours. No one will have a life exactly like the one you live. And it’s true what they say, you teach others how to treat you, so ask yourself, how do you intend to treat yourself and your dreams?
Practically speaking, I would suggest getting a planner, journal, or some other external tool to help you organize your life. Planners have helped me tremendously, and at my core, I am a sucker for list-making. There’s nothing like crossing out a checklist at the end of the day to make you feel productive.
…sometimes I even write down things I’ve already done, just to cross them off the list.
So grab your planner and your bravery, and say goodbye to fear. Define your direction while making room for possible changes. Set your goals and then break them down by month, and then down further by week, setting a due date to keep yourself on track. I truly believe in the power of a planner and dare you to try it out and see how it can change your life for the better.
*Check out the shop to find helpful self-investment tools.
Final Notes:
When I first started my self-investment journey I felt lost. I could recognize I needed a change but couldn’t identify where or how to start. My first step, and perhaps yours is to acknowledge something is wrong. We as women can be so in touch with our emotions, and yet can struggle to identify them when we are burned out, stressed, and overwhelmed from all the self-neglect.
As you start to discover yourself again remember you are brave, you are courageous, and you are worth the effort. Challenge yourself to dream bigger, prioritize your joy, seek fulfillment, and don’t give up on yourself when it gets hard. Difficult times make us resilient and resiliency gets harder and harder to dent and break as time goes on, until there is nothing anyone can say or do that will stand in the way of what you feel is right for your life. I am excited to be a part of your story and welcome you to be a part of mine.
Until nest time,
