It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Time to reflect and hit the reset button. Time to take a good look at what could have gone better and make plans to develop new habits. Time to reset priorities and think about how I can better use my time and money. Time to set goals and make intentions for how I want to live over the next 12 months. I love to set goals at any time of year, but January 1st always feels so fresh and open to me.
This year, unlike last, I know where I’ll be for at least the first 5 months of the year: living in Quito, Ecuador. Having that stability makes it a lot easier to set goals, so I’m feeling inspired for 2016.
We recorded a podcast episode for Guinea Pigging Green about our goals and intentions for 2016 here, if you prefer podcasts to blog posts. You can also see my goals for 2015 here – I was able to complete most of them!
Goals
Daily:
To me, my daily goals are my favourites. When I set them, I ask: by this time next year, what daily habits would I like to have incorporated into my life? It almost feels too easy to frame it that way, but working on something every single day pretty quickly turns it into a habit, or something I do at least most of the time. Last year that was exercising, meditating, flossing, and keeping a gratitude journal. I’m happy to say that all of those are now habits that I do the majority of my days. Last year I started using Elise Joy’s Daily Goal Trackers and I highly recommend them. Seeing your overall progress on a daily habit is so motivational.
This year, I plan to keep up all of my 2015 habits and add some more. My daily goals for 2016 are:
Plan my day
Wake up by 7AM
Do something intentionally creative
Monthly:
Set monthly goals: As in, each month, make a to-do list of things that I either need or want to do that month or that season. Sometimes setting goals for the year doesn’t work out because life changes so much month-by-month. This practice of setting goals for each coming month has really been effective for me in the past.
Buy one thing that sparks joy: I’m an underbuyer, which means I can go for a long time not spending money on little things that could actually improve my life and make me happier. Like a real measuring cup, or socks without holes in the toes, or a pen that writes smoothly (all things I have avoided buying in the past). I plan to keep a list of what happiness-inducing item I’ve intentionally bought each month.
Donate to charity: I donate every month to the Pencils of Promise Passport program, but I’d like to make a supplemental donation too.
Write about my word for 2016: Similar to these reflections on my 2013 word abundance, I want to write a post each month about my 2016 word.
2016:
Read 75 books: My favourite goal of the year, by far. I’ll also be trying to match what I read to the PopSugar 2016 reading challenge that a reader sent me, like I did last year. It’s kind of fun to challenge yourself to read things that you wouldn’t normally, which is fun. I made a fill-in-the-blanks chart for the challenge if you want to play along too! You can find a copy of it here. As always, you can follow my progress on GoodReads.
Travel to one new place a month: This doesn’t necessarily mean get on a plane for a few hours and stay in a hotel, it can be somewhere local enough that we’re home for dinner! But I know how easy it is for me to let a couple months go by without planning anything fun, and it’s so nice to have things to look forward to.
Intentions
- Be more intentional with my relationships
- Observe my monkey mind
- Err on the side of connection
- Be light with myself and others
- Cultivate community
- Trust my intuition
- Create beautiful rituals
- Resist the resistance
As I write this, it’s December 31st, 2015, and I’m in an airport waiting for my flight back to Ecuador after two wonderful weeks spent at home with my family. I’m excited to go back, to settle in, to make friends, to tackle goals, and to be a better version of myself in 2016. Wish me luck!
Happy New Year, friends. Thanks for reading.
