It’s full of anticipation and momentum and fresh starts. The kind of fresh starts where you resolve to do something, or be someone different.
Except I’m not really one for resolutions as some people make at the beginning of the year; I prefer goals.
Before the new year begins I set down and set myself goals for my personal and professional life, and then come January 1, I have my steps and strategies in place to make them happen.
I find it’s the little STEPS that really help me to achieve my goals throughout the year.
Recently I’ve been reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, and he breaks down achieving goals in quite a different, but equally awesome way.
Behind every successfully achieved goal is a set of routines and habits that are followed consistently and completely, that support the goal that was set. It’s actually the habits that cause the goal to be achieved.
Clear says that there are three types of habits – outcome-based habits, process-based habits, and identity-based habits, with identiy-based habits having the most lasting change. They are made based on who we want to become, rather than what we want to achieve.
I love this idea because I know in my own life if I set a goal and I have no real purpose behind it then it’s much easier fo r me to let it slip and not achieve it.
My vision of living a self-sufficient life and being a creator not a consumer, is part of what I want my identity to be. So growing my own food and cooking from scratch hold much more meaning for me.
In his book, Clear sums up habits and goal-setting in two simple steps:
Wow. So simple, but it makes so much sense!
The answer to that question will lead you to your goals for the coming year.
Which can be a really hard question to answer; life brings with it many trials and disappointments, and the innocent dreams we have as children can get lost along the way. But often, our true passion was evident in the astronaut-loving, ballerina-doting passions of our childhoods.
In the last hundred years, life has changed dramatically. Technology is changing at a rate that we can’t keep up with; there’s always something new just out of reach.
Now we live in a world full of choices and overwhelm.
We have so many time-saving, effiiciency-driving options around us allowing us to ‘do more’, that we now spend much of our time rushing form one thing to the next so we can just ‘get ahead’.
There’s no space to really think about our purpose and who we dreamed of being as a child.
The more we can get back to the heart of who we are the easier our goals will become
As human beings, we are creators by nature.
Whether it’s coming up with new ideas and inventions, creating a home that feels welcoming and warm, or simply creating a garden full of life, creating is where we find the most happiness and satisfaction.
It gives us PURPOSE.
And that is where your most achievable goals lie.
So for 2023, instead of setting resolutions where you have to work against yourself, or setting goals that simply sit on the surface, ask yourself the question, who do I really want to be, and watch the ideas flow.
For more inspiration about living with intention, growing a garden and cooking from scratch, make sure you sign up to my weekly emails, and join my community over on my page Filled to Overflowing.