HEYOOOO 2020! Happy New Year again, my friends – I hope you are READY to ROad into these roarin’ 20’s ahead. 🙂 We just dove into the past yesterday with a comprehensive look at 2019. Now that that’s in the rearview mirror in every sense, let’s talk about the FUTURE. If you haven’t figured this out by now…I’m a bit of a planner. 😉 I’m a total Enneagram 3 and like everything to be organized + scheduled + outlined through as long as humanly possible, oftentimes to the point of unreasonable expectations. BUT HEY – it ain’t always a bad thing. I’ve definitely refined my goal-setting process through the years and have learned where to give myself grace versus hustle harder, and that’s always a skill to tweak as LIFE happens. Honestly, it grinds my gears sometimes seeing everyone and their mom’s goals pop up on social media this time of year. Of course, everyone has the right to set their own goal for whatever reason – it’s not that that gets me amped.
It’s HOW it’s done.
Because more often than not, folks set goals in ineffective ways that likely won’t actually lead to end results, because they’re not really clear or actionable in an A-to-B kinda way. Granted, maybe not every goal NEEDS that kinda clarity – maybe you’re totally A-OK with something totally generalized and don’t really have a set idea of what it looks like if/when you reach it.
But that’s not me. 😉 And I’d bet that’s not really you EITHER if your goals are things that you really truly care a lot about (which hopefully you do, otherwise why waste time making them happen, amiright?).
In thinking of goals…
- Be realistic for YOU, not for Nancy Next Door.
- Know your WHY behind each goal.
- Make ’em SMART. Yannno; Specific, Measurable, Action-based, Realistic, and Time-oriented!
An example of this: “Get healthy” isn’t the greatest goal, because there’s really no clear idea of what that looks like if/when its achieved. What does “get healthy” mean to you? Does that mean you’re eating something green every single day? Does it mean you’re working out 3x/week? Are you nixing your Donut Day at work, or adding a daily walk around the culdesac to your calendar? If you don’t set specific parameters for what a goal actually looks like, you won’t know what it looks like to actually ACHIEVE IT! And that’s kinda sorta the whole point.
So.
Hopefully that little example helps shift your mental framework for your own goal-setting – I’ll share mine below!
My 2020 New Year Goals:
Personal New Year goals:
- Do my bicep curl sets with 20 pound weights + be able to do 20 regular pushups in a row. This is a biggy for me because for so long in my life I never felt strong. People would always say to me growing up, “Oh my God you’re so SKINNY!” and I HATED THAT. I always associated strength with confidence and NEVER felt strong in my upper body, so I’ve got a goal to get to a place where I truly feel STRONG + proud of my upper body strength.
- Read 2 books/month. My at-home library is loaded with goodies, and 2 books/month of what’s already in there is still not enough to get through the stack – and I’m sure more good reads will be released in 2020. Mine included. 😉 2/month feels realistic given my schedule while being a stretch still, so I think I can do it!
- Get organized in my home + reconciled in my business once a week. These are two tasks that typically dogpile for me and then smack me in the face hard. I’m setting aside dedicated time once a week to do a complete organization of anything + everything that needs it, as well as reconciling all of my business accounting to be up to date!
- Consolidate my work week into 4 days. This is a biggy that I’ve already started implementing and I loveloveLOVE it. I reaaaally want one day a week that’s just me + Olivia and FUN together. If I get most of my work for the week done by Friday, I can make it happen! (With the exception of any little tasks that need completing during naptime, of course!). Otherwise, we run errands together, hit up the park, play games – and we share a sweet treat because FRIDAY.
- Turn our house into a home – one that is put-together, organized, + as tidy as possible with a toddler 😉 This one I say pre-emptively in anticipation of some reaaaaaally exciting news that is LIKELY happening this year. Not guaranteed yet. Stay tuned. But. Woo.
- Do a true Marie Kondo on my entire closet – including my shoes. We haven’t done a true PURGE since – well, basically ever. When we first moved into our townhome, it was a pretty quick turnaround and for a few reasons, I didn’t get to really go through every individual item before transitioning it. So while I’ve gotten to go through things here or there, I plan on doing an individual review item-by-item and only keep the things that I truly loveloveLOVE that bring actual JOY in my life!
- Attend another personal development conference. I attended Rachel Hollis’ RISE Conference in 2019 and it was truly transformative for me, so I’d love to attend that again, as well as add another to my calendar!
- Refine + revamp my morning routine and adopt it religiously. Every successful person basically ever swears by their morning routine, and I’ve talked about their importance + value time and time again (including on the THRIVE podcast – listen here!). I’ve always had certain elements in mine, but with Olivia being a baby and then going through various sleep regressions, my own morning routine often took the backseat (if mama is up at 3 or 4 am with a teething baby – ain’t nobody got time for 5 am wakeup to workout – ha!).
- Journal daily more comprehensively. In 2019 I got pretty good at daily gratitude + goal journaling, I journal notes on my phone about Olivia, and anytime I brain dump it feels like journaling, but I’d like to get back to more regular journaling of my general thoughts all in own place so that I can look back and track personal growth through it.
- Hit my business goals. I have goals for everything from income to audience growth as all businesses likely do, so I’ll just flesh those out more below. 😉
- Find a mentor. I’ve always craved mentorship from someone that wasn’t being paid for it, if that amakes sense – ha! I’d consider myself as having lots of mentors in terms of people who inadvertently pour into me everytime I consume their content, podcasts, blogs etc, but I’d lovelovelove to have someone pouring into me more personally and knowing my own story along the way. TBD!
CUR New Year goals:
Oftentimes I find myself so caught up in churning out content that I blatantly forget to SHARE said content on all of my social media platforms with y’all. So one of my biggest new year goals for the blog is to be more intentional about actually SHARING everything that I create where you’re hanging out online, so that I’m meeting you where you are instead of always relying on folks staying up-to-date with the blog alone.
- GROWTH + IMPACT. The big themes in play.
- Meet more of you in person! Literally my favorite thing ever. The closet sale I hosted back in May was AWESOME for this; someone came down from NEW YORK right around her college exams time just to hang out + shop, which was incredible!! (HI ALLISON, ILYSM). Meeting readers/followers is the best feeling ever because it’s re-grounding and the perfect reminder of my own WHY, since it puts actual faces to analytics numbers.
- MAYBE do another closet sale? It would fulfill the aforementioned goal while doing good, especially since we donated 100% of proceeds last time to charity! Only thing is it is a HUUUUUGE undertaking; in the in-between time since then I’ve just been donating 100% of my things to my favorite women’s shelter, so we’ll see if I set anything aside for a future potential sale.
- Host a book release party – AND YOU’RE INVITED! My first book is being published this year. I’ll throw a party, and you can come. Stay tuned.
- Dive deeper in with Katie and build our team even more! Having Katie has been a true Godsend for CUR behind-the-scenes, and it’s our hope to just dive in even deeper together + expand the team even more as we can and as the biz branches out!
- Partner with 5 totally new brands that I haven’t collaborated with before. Of course I always lovelovelove repeat work with my favorite brands (because I only work with brands I lovelovelove ANYWAYS), but I’m excited to connect with some of my faves who I haven’t officially partnered with before to share exciting new launches + products with you!
- Develop long-term partnerships and contracts with at least 5 brands. Kinda goes hand-in-hand with the above point
- Hit all of the pageview/numbers goals without losing sight of the people behind the platform numbers. I have a few major hiccups behind-the-scnes with technology + tracking this year (+ dating back to potentially 2017-ish(, and it was honestly a HUGE damper on much of my work. So the goal this year is to resolve all issues ASAP + get on track without ever forgetting the whole why in the first place: YOU!
- Be a SPEAKER! And I can cross this one off already very, very soon. 😉
- Be AHEAD on content and never again in the history of ever be finishing a blog post on its publication day. I had, like, a month-long stint where I was GREAT at this and ahead and ON IT. And then…life happened. And I found myself yet again hitting “add new post” on the day of publication. No bueno, yo – it throws off my entire posting schedule AND my day-to-day regular schedule since a post can take a solid 4 hours to put together, between writing + editing + linking + resizing photos, etc. This year, I’ll have posts done before day-of so that you can expect newness from CUR when you log online in the AM.
PHEW.
I’m ready to make it happen – are you?
What are your new year goals?
I WANNA KNOW!