If you‘ve been around here for very long, you know I adore daily TO Do lists – making them, updating them, looking at them. I also love a pretty list of annual S.M.A.R.T goals.
S.M.A.R.T, of course, because they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and have a Timeframe. S.M.A.R.T. goals are written with action in mind. But many times we leave out a crucial step…. how what we feel impacts our goals and vice versa.
This year I’m taking a new approach to my constant note taking – slash – list making – slash – goal making.
I follow the adorable Miss Hilary Rushford and during her annual goal setting call, she challenged us to look back at our year and write down how we felt overall for each month. Doing this gives us a great overview of how we felt throughout the whole year. It collided with another idea I’ve been mulling around – that humans have six basic human needs and all we do and want almost always tie back to how we think these needs can be met. I’m asking myself a whole different set of questions when I set my goals this year , and you can do. At the onset, I’m asking:
How do I think meeting this goal will make me feel?
How will my life look if I meet this goal?
How will I actually feel if I meet this goal?
Is there a disconnect?
When I ask these questions and combine it with Hilary’s question of how do I feel each month vs how do I want to feel, sometimes my goals change. I have the chance to feel things before putting my heart and soul into something that deep down has no power to satisfy the longing of my heart.
This January, I relied on memory for last year’s “feeling assessment.” So this year, I wanted to incorporate a new way of tracking my months (surprise!) in addition to sticking with my notebook system.
I wanted a sheet where I could list out my monthly goals, how I felt throughout the month, things I learned and so on.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s hard to remember things after I’ve processed them and moved on. I go through quite a few notebooks in the course of a year and wanted one place I could document things to reflect on easily instead of paging through lots of notes.
So I decided to make a customized monthly goal sheet and thought I’d share in case you want one too!
The downloadable file contains all twelve months of 2017 and has a place for documenting how I felt overall that month, prayer requests, lessons learned, anything small I might want to remember (life events, something funny the kids say, etc.), and of course my monthly goals and a TO DO list for breaking them down into smaller chunks. It can be used as a way to track your annual or 90-day goals on a monthly basis. I’m so excited about this method.
I already printed all mine out and put them in the big binder I keep my ongoing biz documents in. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The Lord is constantly reminding his people in the Old Testament to look back at all the things He’s brought them through; to remember what they experienced first hand of His goodness. These sheets are a great way to document His goodness and remember all year long.
January has come and gone but it’s not too late to jot down what you learned and how you felt. Maybe a note or two about what’s going on in your life right now and where your heart is…for posterity’s sake. And then move on to February.
I tell people time and again, the list serves it’s purpose, but we can get so wrapped up in achieving things we forget what’s important. As much as I love checking off boxes I’ve been more focused lately on doing the things that are important and leaving or eliminating the rest. In the end, staying busy isn’t the point. Being productive isn’t even the point (gasp!). The point for me is living purposefully and in line with what I should be doing, not what I could be doing. And satisfying my need for significance in more healthy ways – like connecting emotionally with my family. There’s a balance out there that heals the soul. With these sheets, I can aim straight for it.
Access them below!
Don’t forget to share to Pinterest and Facebook to help others make their goals too!
