How to Set Achievable Goals for Next Year

Like a business plan, it is important to set, revisit and reassess our life goals and reflect on some of our key learnings along the way.

The benefits of goal setting and personal life planning are holistic and endless. They provide clarity and purpose, a sense of direction, and help motivate us with a longer-term vision. They also encourage personal growth and enable us to better manage our time, relationships, physical and mental health.

The new year presents an ideal time to approach personal goal setting. However, for those new to it, it can be challenging to know where to start, which is why this guide has been designed by the experts at Kamalaya Connect to help support you on your first steps along your goal-setting journey.

Reflection

Reflecting on the past year helps us gain valuable insights into our lives and how we spend our time. Just like businesses assess their performance and refine their strategies, we too should evaluate our personal experiences and use these insights to shape our goals.

Using a journal, write down a list of prompts to get you thinking about the past year. Don’t dwell on events or occasions, just write notes and move on to the next. These are a few to get you started:

• What were my biggest accomplishments this year?
• What were the highlights?
• What were the challenges?
• What would I do differently if I could start the year over?
• What were the worst things that happened? What did I learn from them?
• What do I currently love most about my life?
• What day-to-day things bring me joy?
• What things do I look forward to the most?
• On a scale of one (low) to ten (high), how good do I feel about the year that’s just passed? What number would I allocate to previous year? What made the difference?

Reflection provides the foundation for purposeful goal setting, helping us align our intentions with our values and vision.

Identifying goals

After the reflection, start by writing down everything that you want to achieve in your life. You can either keep the list generic or split it across several categories for more balance. Categories could be Health; Relationships; Career; Finance; Mental Health; Home & Environment; Creativity & Personal Growth.

Once you’ve listed everything that you want to achieve, go through it and consider which are habits, and which ones are goals. Habits look like ‘to quit smoking’ or ‘to stop eating junk food’. A goal would be ‘to live a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Remove the habits for another list, then number each of the remaining items starting with one, the most important item, two the second most important and so on.

Now it’s time to decide how many goals you want to focus on. Three to four is a good number, so referring to the list, items that you numbered one to three or four should be your key goals.

Putting a strategy in place

Now that you’ve identified your goals, it’s important to make them specific and measurable so that you can track progress and have a tangible goal ahead of you. Try to add a value and timeline if possible. For example, instead of ‘to lose weight’ add, ‘to reduce my weight xyz within six months’, or instead of ‘to start saving’, it could be: ‘To save $25,000 within 12 months’.

For each goal listed, write down each of the steps it will take you to reach that milestone. Visualisation works well here, if you imagine yourself as having accomplished that goal, think back to all the steps it took to reach that moment. This will be your strategy for achieving your new personal goal, which can be incorporated into your overall personal plan for the year.

Habits

After you’ve created a list of habits that you want to stop or start, repeat the same exercise by numbering each habit on the list, starting with one as the most important. Now choose the top two to three, and create a plan with values and timelines, essentially treating habit change like goal setting.

Checking in

Schedule a check-in date to monitor your progress towards goals. This could be in three or six-months’ time and you can use the metrics that you set out initially. Assess your current situation, are you on track or do you need more work? For example, if the goal was to save $25,000 in one year, by mid-year / month 6 you should expect to be halfway to your savings goal or more. If you’re not where you’re supposed to be, it’s time to reevaluate the original steps that you mapped out and consider alternate approaches. Make sure that you celebrate successes and use any shortcomings as a learning experience to further grow and develop in this area.

For further expert guidance, consider Kamalaya Connects Personal Mentorship sessions. Working with a Life Enhancement Mentor you’ll undergo the process of healing, learn profound personal insights and explore areas of your life with confidence, helping you to set out a productive set of life goals and embrace a more balanced sense of self.