Crafting New Year's Goals

By now, your email inbox has likely been flooded with how-to-make-2024-an-amazing-success tips. You might have contemplated creating a vision board or even jotted down a few hopes and dreams for the new year. If you feel excited and ready to tackle some new year's goals, congratulations!

But if you feel overwhelmed and exhausted, that's understandable too.

THIS TIME OF YEAR CAN FEEL LIKE A LOT OF PRESSURE TO SET THE RIGHT GOALS IN THE RIGHT WAY TO TURN ALL YOUR DREAMS INTO REALITY

There has been a recent backlash about the importance placed on goal-setting in the new year, and I totally get it! After the mad rush of the holidays, the new year can feel like a bit of a crash. Setting goals may seem performatively aspirational. Or maybe it just feels like New Year's goal setting in the age of social media is designed to make you feel bad about yourself.

SETTING INTENTIONS FOR ALL-OF-THE-THINGS-THAT-WILL-IMPROVE-YOUR-LIFE IN THE COMING YEAR IS A MINDSET THAT COMES FROM A PLACE OF LACK

Please allow me to get a little woo-woo for a moment as I share again my favorite mantra:

"Energy flows where your attention goes."

This concept, akin to vision boarding and setting New Year's Goals, seems easy enough: focus on the things you want to attract them into your life. There is a fundamental problem with this idea, however.

THE REASON GOAL SETTING/VISION BOARDING/ENERGY-FLOW-DIRECTING FAILS IS BECAUSETHESE GOALS ARE CRAFTED IN AN EXTERNAL WAY

In other words, setting goals for a new car, pasting pictures of a million dollars on a vision board, aiming for an elusive publishing deal - all of these external goals originate from a sense of lack. Energy is like water - it will flow into those voids and expand that feeling of scarcity - even if you do somehow attain that car!

Now, if you just can't get on board with the idea of directing energy flow to improve your life, consider psychologist Richard Wiseman's experiment on how to be lucky as a more tangible take.

SO HOW DO YOU CRAFT INTERNAL GOALS TO ALLOW POSITIVE ENERGY TO FLOW?

In the last couple of blog posts, we've discussed assessing your last year and crafting a brag sheet of your life. In this post, I want to encourage you to dive into two different ways to think about your New Year's Resolutions:

1. How do I want this goal to make me FEEL?

2. WHY do I want to feel this way?

It's common to set goals based on external expectations or factors beyond our control. For instance, aiming to make a specific amount of money to feel successful or seeking a publishing deal to feel valued.

These types of goals may feel seductive because they are safe. You aren't really responsible if they don't happen, right?

DIVING INTO THE WHY BEHIND THE GOAL CAN HELP REDEFINE SUCCESS IN A WAY THAT ALIGNS MORE CLOSELY WITH YOUR VALUES AND DESIRES, INDEPENDENT OF EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES

This shows you exactly where to direct your energy flow to craft Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals for 2024!