Set Yourself up for success in 2021
with the ‘We Strive Well Goal Planning Method’
If there’s one thing that 2020 has taught us it’s that things don’t always go as planned. There’s so much in this world, and our lives, that we can’t control and must simply surrender to. If 2020 has been an especially tough year for you we want you to know that we are here for you. We want to help you see the coming new year as an opportunity to design and strive for the life you want.
Although we must relinquish control of many things, it is a mistake to think that we must surrender to everything. We still have agency over ourselves; our attitudes, our choices, our reactions, our habits, our routines, and ultimately, our lives. Yes, there are things we cannot control, but there’s so much more that we can control and it is up to us to find calm amongst the chaos by setting ourselves up for success this year, no matter what’s going on in the world.
Over the last few years, Adrian and I have made a habit of setting aside an hour or two around the New Year to sit down together and reflect on the successes and challenges of the past year, and to map out our intentions and goals for the upcoming year as well as the habit changes that are needed to achieve them. We focus on personal growth and the things that we can control rather than basing our goals on external events or circumstances. We believe that with a little up-front organization it is possible to actively design a life that makes us feel healthy, whole, and empowered. We would like to help you do the same by sharing the ‘We Strive Well Goal Planning Method’ with you.
It is so easy to be a bystander in your own life and to let things “just happen” to you -- letting the waves in the ocean of your life crash into you and drag you this way and that. Yes, Adrian and I are in the ocean too and there are very big waves, but we have built a stable and balanced boat that can navigate each wave, relatively unscathed. Once every few years, there may be a wave so massive that it knocks you overboard, but if you’ve built the structure successfully it will always be there for you to climb back into. To actively participate in your life takes effort, self-awareness, and reflection. Taking control and actively directing your life can be very uncomfortable at first but it is so worth it. Many of us are used to planning out our days and weeks and some of you may even plan out each month, but planning what you want to change and achieve in the whole year will make planning those smaller time increments much easier. In taking the time to zoom out and to shape our year, year after year, we are actually shaping our lives.
We would like to share our process with you to help set you up for success in the coming year. This is not the same thing as “New Year’s resolutions”! We all know that most resolutions are made with great promise and then abandoned a few weeks or maybe months later. Instead of making and breaking promises to be/do more of this and less of that, we choose to reflect on the year that has passed and not only list our future goals, but also map out how to actually achieve them by specifying monthly, weekly, and daily habits. We also try to choose goals that are abundance focused (stay with me) meaning that instead of saying ‘I must stop doing X, Y and Z’ or ‘I must lose 10lbs’ or ‘I must eliminate X, Y and Z’ we try to frame things in the positive so that we are adding things to our lives instead of just removing. Instead of saying; ‘I want to lose 10lbs’ why not say ‘I want to become stronger, healthier, and more confident’ and to achieve that goal you will add things to your routine, diet, and lifestyle (e.g. morning walks, workout classes four times a week and nutritious home-cooked foods) rather than specifying what you must remove from your life to achieve that goal (e.g. no chocolate, no carbs, stop being lazy, etc.). The benefits of framing your goals in the positive are twofold; first, it should make this exercise more fun by preventing you from wallowing in guilt and berating yourself for poor decisions over the last year and; second, you have a much higher chance of actually achieving those goals because solely focusing on all of the things that you cannot do, actually gives those things more power; suddenly they’re all you can think about! It’s not in the spirit of balance to deprive yourself of everything and ultimately it is unsustainable, so let’s focus on what we can do instead!
The task of planning your personal growth for the year may sound daunting, but it is an extremely valuable exercise. Our ‘We Strive Well Goal Planner’ is a seven page downloadable PDF that includes a planning page for each of life’s five main categories; Professional, Relationships, Health & Wellness, Financial and Home Environment. It also contains instructions on how to fill out each page and ideas for sub-categories that can go within each category. You can see an example page below. So turn off Netflix, put down your glass of wine, set your phone to “do not disturb”, and follow the ‘We Strive Well Goal Planning Method’ to strive for success in 2021.
