Creating an Inspiring New Year, Personally & Professionally

I know it's still December, but bear with me here. I'm not trying to rush through the festivities of the coming month but I do want to help you prepare for the fabulous New Year that follows.

Are you as excited about setting new years goals for 2018 as I am? Creating the road map to make them a reality? There's something magical about that entire sparkly new year stretching out ahead just waiting for us to make our mark on it. It summons visions of optimism, hope, and possibilities.

New Year's resolutions are a totally different animal to me, not to mention the division amongst people when it comes to them. Some seem to either love them while others absolutely hate them!

While failing miserably at resolutions by early February is a running joke in our society, the new year is still an awesome time to set goals and intentions for our businesses as well as our personal lives. Take this blank slate, this fresh start full of possibilities and make it yours. Use this great jolt of motivation to craft the year of your own making, starting (and ending) it in a place that you intentionally created!

Here are some of my favorite practices for setting (and achieving) effective and inspiring goals for the New Year.

Choose your goals for the overall year

Write down what you'd love to happen in your life and business this year. I would recommend having a separate list for each. IMPORTANT – don't just write down what you think you should do.

• What do you actually want?
• What would you love to happen this year?
• What are you willing to take action on?

Cross things out, take notes, put some thought into it, and rewrite your final goals on a fresh sheet of paper.

Once that step is complete, schedule an appointment in your calendar to map out the details. What is it going to take to accomplish your goals? This step is crucial to your success. Keep the appointment!

Side note: You don't have to wait for the new year to do this! I love asking myself occasionally where I'd love to be in the next year or so. The new year just provides a convenient way to measure this time!

Set quarterly goals

Those big year-long goals can feel overwhelming. What can you accomplish in the next three months to support the goals of the year? For example, if you want to write a book this year, maybe your first quarter goal is to decide on a topic, create an outline, and write the first ten chapters. Three-month goals are far more actionable that year-long goals. Once you've got your quarter planned out, break those goals into daily and weekly action steps. Now that you’ve mapped out the details, plug the tasks into your calendar. You're on your way to crushing your year-long goals!

Create a vision board

You've probably heard this tip a lot, and that's because vision boards work! This is an awesome way to really spend some time thinking about what you want to create in your life and visualize it, which is hugely powerful in actually creating that reality.

Virtual or tangible? Go ahead and make a Pinterest board with everything you want to create this year, or go old school and grab some magazines, scissors, a foam or poster board and a glue stick! Reinforce your vision by keeping it in front of you, online or off. Take time to look at it and feel what it will feel like to experience it.

Choose a guiding word

I've seen this practice floating around a lot over the past few years and I love it, especially for the resolution-averse. The idea is that you choose a word that encompasses what you want to do, be, or experience for the year.

One way to do this is to start by making a list of words that feel good to you, i.e. ease, abundance, joy, etc. Next, use the process of elimination to choose one to be your guiding word for the year.

Once you've chosen your word, feel free to get artsy and create a beautiful way to display this word where you can see it! You could turn your word into a small painting, cross-stitch, pretty lettering in a frame, or even just print it out to stick up by your computer where it can serve as a daily reminder of your intention for the year.

Personally, I allow my word to come to me. Once I tell myself that it’s time to start thinking about it, I wait and watch/listen over the next few days to see what comes up.

In 2017, I tried to force it. Everything sounded and felt tired and cliché to me so I decided I wasn’t going to have a word or phrase this year. Within a day or so, it became very clear on its own. Trust Yourself. That was it! 2017 has been a year of trusting myself and so many levels and it has been a grand adventure indeed!!

Write a letter to yourself

I love this idea because it's like time travel! Write a letter to yourself describing what you've learned over the past year based on your goals for the coming year. Write it as if you have achieved them all. Include anything your future self thinks is important for you to know. Write it now AND read it again a year from now to see the progress you’ve made. This can be a fun and inspiring way to see how far you've come as a person and business owner and give yourself a shot of motivation for the coming year.

I hope this inspires you to create the most amazing year ever! I wish you happiness, success, and everything you can imagine for the coming year. Here’s to an incredible 2018!