It’s the end of another year, and that means looking forward to 2019 and what we want to try to accomplish in the next 12 months.  Ideally, we won’t wake up one year from now and find ourselves in the exact same spot (financially, emotionally, mentally) as the year before. 

The more time goes by the more I have realized the importance of setting specific goals for myself. The past three years especially have taught me that I can’t just sit around and wait for my life to happen to me.  If I want certain things to happen or stop happening, I am 100% responsible for it.

I never liked the idea of New Year’s resolutions.  I think it’s because most resolutions you hear about are as vague as wanting world peace.  I tend to do better when I set specific quarterly, monthly, or even weekly goals and reevaluate at the end of each specified time period to see how successful I was.  Typically, I do this on a monthly basis, but if I find myself really struggling with something, I will even set a daily goal to force myself into a new habit. 

Most recently I had to do this with my appearance.  I realized that I had let myself slip into a habit of wearing workout clothes on a daily basis.  Literally – every day of the week.  I had also managed to start going completely makeup free.  What’s the problem you might ask?  Well, there wasn’t one, until the morning I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize this person I saw who was making zero effort.  And it felt like that lack of effort was starting to spill over into other parts of my life.  I had to take a step back and hit that reset button.  I had to literally tell myself – you are going to wear full makeup every day this week, and you are going to wear jeans every day this week.  No leggings, no sweats – jeans (I’m talking about baby steps here).  So, then those two things turned into me setting my alarm an hour earlier each day, and then an hour and a half earlier each day because I realized I could start my day a little more peacefully with the extra time.  I’ve actually now been reading more and more articles linking the earlier wake time to improved mental health and increased productivity.  So that small baby goal of forcing myself to make an effort with my appearance has now evolved into a new goal of waking up earlier and being more productive, and everything else just kind of snowballs from there. 

So, if you are having trouble figuring out where to get started with goal setting, here are some things to remember.

1. No step is too small.  Even the tiniest daily tasks can become healthy habits that can change your life.  Tell yourself you are going to do it and just start doing it.  It can be something as tiny as waking up 15 minutes earlier each day for a week.  As I said before, I like to set weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals.
2. Evaluate.  Try looking back and evaluating how far you’ve come each week and each month and identify where you’ve had success and where you’ve struggled.  If you’re having a hard time with a particular goal, try to identify what you can do differently to try to have more success.  Or you may find that particular goal isn’t something you want to continue working towards and may replace it with a new goal, which leads to my next point.
3. Reassess and move forward.  It’s normal for goals to change and priorities to shift as we start accomplishing things on our lists. One of the reasons I set so many different timelines for myself is that I want to constantly be moving forward and improving.  For me, the only way to do that is to be flexible and know that the list will change, and that deciding something should no longer be a goal for you is not necessarily failure, it’s growth. 

These are some of the goals I am looking forward to so far as we go into 2019.  It’s not a very long list and I know that it will evolve as the year progresses.

Weekly:

1.  Move my wake-up time from 6am to 530am.  We’ll see how this goes.  I have never in my life been a morning person.  I love being able to lay in bed and do nothing for as long as possible before I have to start thinking about getting going for the day.  But, for me right now, I need more time in the day and this seems to be the best way to go about getting that. 
2. Get back into working out at least 3 days a week.  This needs to be more like 6 days a week but I’ve taken off an entire 6 months from regular exercise so I’m starting low to be able to work myself back into it.
3. Post at least once a week to the blog.  I think this will be my most challenging goal but I am determined to work on it.

Monthly:

January

1. List (and hopefully sell) the flip house we’ve been working on.  I know this is possible if we just push on it.  We are so close.
2. Closeout 2018 bookkeeping for both businesses. 

First Quarter of 2019

1. Find an empty lot and get started on our new build project.  We’ve been focused on remodeling and want to shift that somewhat to a new build.  This would be an ideal time to move on that. 

That’s it for now.  What are some of goals you are thinking about as we move into 2019?