The EASIEST Goal Planning Strategy To Make Your Dreams A Reality In Exactly One Year

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

At the beginning of each year, I become the old grandma that you want to avoid at Thanksgiving dinner. You know, the one that’s constantly asking you "how's school going" (when you spent way too much time drinking and may have to drop a class or two) and the unavoidable “what’s next for you” question you’ve been ducking by quickly stuffing some turkey in your mouth.

My favorite question to ask by far is not the typical “What are your new year’s resolution?” No, it catches people much more off guard than that.

I have the audacity to ask people something they have not thought about at all…

What’s your plan to do that?

You see, I’ve learned one thing about New Year’s Resolutions (and goals in general). People LOVE setting goals at the beginning of the year but they don’t create their plan at the beginning of the year.

However, if you add this one, simple step to your goal setting process, you’ll be able to better determine what you need to do to accomplish your goal.

Thinking about your goal in terms of the goals you have to accomplish on  a quarterly basis and then breaking that down further into the smaller goals you must accomplish monthly does a few things for your brain:

• It let’s you know that your big goal IS POSSIBLE.

• It helps you understand EXACTLY WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO GET THERE

• It puts you in a mindset that your goal will be accomplished OVER THE COURSE OF A YEAR

That third point is the most important because it transforms your mindset from having a goal – to having a long term goal that you are not prepared to dedicate yourself to.

Now let’s get to the fun part… How do you break down your large goal into quarterly goals and then monthly goals?

Before you get started breaking down your goal, you need to have one LARGE goal to work with. If you're still nailing down your big goal (or still searching for some mental clarity in your vision, check out How To Create Your 5-Year Vision (even if you don’t know where to start). 

Once you have your big goal, it's time to break it down into the tiny steps you'll make over the next year to make this your best year ever.

CREATE YOUR QUARTERLY GOALS

As a child, I was a serious gamer. (I actually had an entire birthday party where I asked my friends to show up with their Gameboys to play Pokemon together.) I would get super excited when I hit a checkpoint and now I could do no wrong in the game. No matter what I did, I was not going back to square one.

Think about your quarterly goals like a checkpoint in a video game. Once you've crossed one of these large hurdles, you're well on your way to completing your goal. 

What four huge milestones do you have to hit to be able to accomplish your goals at the end of the year?

For Example, if you want to write a book you may want to:

• Quarter 1: Create the book outline and the characters.

• Quarter 2: Write the first draft of the book.

• Quarter 3: Get feedback.

• Quarter 4: Write the final version of the book.

(Side note: Before you legit writer’s start judging, please know that this is my loose – very loose – interpretation of what it would take to write a book. I understand everyone’s process is different.)

Now that you know exactly what you want to do for each quarter of the year, you have already achieved one massive benefit: You don’t have to focus on everything all at once. That means that while you’re creating your outline, you don’t have to concern yourself with writing the book. In fact, you can clear your mind of the next steps entirely because you know exactly what you will do – and when you’re going to do them.

BREAK DOWN THE GOALS INTO THE MONTHLY GOALS.

With three months in each quarter, we’re going to take the quarterly goals and break them down further into three bite-sized goals.

Let’s take the Quarter 1 Goal from the first example.

Quarter goal: Create the book outline and develop characters

• January: Create the outline for the book

• February: Develop the plot, conflict and scene

• March: Describe the characters look and personalities

By breaking your goals down in this way you can celebrate your small wins each month, while still having a legitimate plan to get to the rest of your goals. You can also work on one goal without the pressure of feeling like you have to do "it all" right now.

With that mental weight off your shoulders you can fully immerse yourself into what you're working on right now. You can slowly think through exactly how you want your book to flow (or start your weight loss journey with eating one less piece of fresh-baked sugar cookies or reclaim your time by NOT letting Netflix force you into an additional episode of Stranger Things) knowing that you'll get to the next step of the process shortly. #GoodLuckWithThat

Taking some time to develop your largest goal into an annual plan will help you map out your goals and ensure that you complete them by the end of the year.

Happy Goal-Crushing!

xoxo

Want To Start Planning Your Vision Board Party? 

1. Download the FREE vision board party planning checklist.

2. Craft your inspiring vision board workshop talk with our FREE High Impact Storytelling Journal Prompts. 

3. Plan, promote & host your first (or next) professional & profitable vision board workshop with our signature course, Sold Out Vision Board Parties.

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cyrene is a fun and accomplished workshop facilitator, learning and development guru and Human Resources professional. Being at the helm of Thrive Lounge has been a long-time dream. Through vision board workshops she plans to accomplish two-way learning. Sharing her vast years of knowledge to motivate and encourage others; while simultaneously getting the reward of great energy, ideas and questions to ponder back from each group. A super win-win. Please join our Thrive Lounge community so you too can benefit!

The High-Achiever's 7-Step Guide to Setting Crystal Clear Goals

This new year my family did something we never have done before. In an effort to spend more time with their adult children who have gone from smiling children to stressed out college students with on-and-off relationships and the occasional all-nighter, my parents planned a trip to the Poconos for the holidays. (As a family who is deathly afraid of the cold and own zero snow gear we gave a hard side-eye to the snow-infused activities and spent most of the time in the house playing Uno. #TravelFail)

2 hours before the ball in Times Square dropped signifying yet another year my mother had a trick up her sleeve. She wanted to spend one hour talking about what we did in 2017 that we were proud of... and another hour talking about what we're going to do in the new year. 

But there was a twist. 

Rather than allowing people to simply call out their New Year's resolutions, the family was given an opportunity to ask questions about each person's goals.

Through that process, we encouraged each other to think deeper about the pie in the sky goals we were setting and confidently walk into the new year with a crystal clear vision.

You don't really need a whole committee pelting you with questions to get clarity on your goals (though my family did take joy in interrogating each other). Instead, you can take your use these seven tips to think through your largest goals.

Step 1: Know Your Why

Your goals become more powerful the second you attach a significant meaning to them. Your "why" is the reason you want to accomplish a goal.

Anyone can set a goal to lose weight, pay off debt or make more money, but what does that change mean for you in your life? If you can take a step back from the actual goal and think about how your life will be impacted by this action, you'll be able create more powerful goals. 

For example: 

Your Goal: I want to pay off my student loan debt.
Better Goal: I want to pay off my student loan debt because: 

1. I will have more disposable income.

2. I can save more for retirement.

3. I can be a better role model for my daughter.

4. I can focus on investing and creating a better financial portfolio.

Having a goal is great, but understanding why you want to accomplish that goal is even better. If you can pinpoint a few good reasons or great side effects of accomplishing this goal, then these reasons will help you continue to commit to the goal when times get rough. 

Step 2: Quantify it

Quantifying your goals means to attach a number to it. This means breaking down how much weight you want to lose, how much debt you have to pay off or how many times you want to get deep tissue massages. (Just me?)

For example:

Your Goal: I want to pay off my student loan debt. 
Better Goal: I am going to pay off $32K in student loan debt. 

The benefit of quantifying your goals is that you can clearly and easily articulate exactly how much you have to go on your goals. 

Step 3: Add in a due date

Do you remember being in high school and the teacher tells you you have a paper due at the end of the month, but you'll wait until three days before it's due to start studying? Due dates add a sense of urgency. It can give you the kick in the pants that you need to get moving on the goal. 

Your Goal: I am going to pay off $32K in student loan debt.
Better Goal: I am going to pay off 32K in student loan debt by December 31st. 

Always set a concrete date for when you want that goal to be completed. Otherwise, you might be reaching towards the same goal every single year because you did not give yourself a definitive date to get it done. Your goal for the year becomes a "someday" goal.

Step 4: Add in the how

Your "how" is your action plan. Breaking your big goals into the simpler goals it'll take to accomplish the goal, you make the goal more tangible. You give yourself an opportunity to mentally break down what it will take to get there. 

Your Goal: I am going to pay off $32K in student loan debt.
Better Goal: I am going to pay off $32K in student loan debt by December 31st by lowering my living expenses by half, sticking to a strict "fun money" budget and creating online products.

This step is one of my favorites because it forces you start talking in terms of action. 

 

Step 5: Think about the frequency

Every week on Sunday, I head down to a coffee shop and get to work. I can sit there anywhere from 4-6 hours (like a legit 9-to-5) and that is the day that I'm most productive. When I first started doing this, I would pull myself out of bed, shower and have breakfast then (after a half hour of convincing myself that this was good for me) I'd head to the coffee shop. After weeks of doing this every Sunday, no matter where I am or how I feel that day, my body pulls me into a coffee shop to work. 

Adding in the frequency that you will perform an action that helps you reach your goals (whether it's daily, weekly or monthly) will help you develop a habit over time. 

For example:

Your Goal: I'm going to work out more. 
Better Goal: I'm going to work out three days a week. 
Best Goal: I'm going to work out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 

Getting super clear on your on when you will work on your goals - and sticking to it over time - will increase your ability to accomplish your goals because over time you'll develop habits.

Step 6: Make Your Goal Present On Your Schedule

Chris Hart once said

"Show me your calendar and I'll show you your priorities."

It basically means that we all make time for the things that we want to do and the things that we value in our lives. If you want to be a high achiever, you simply have to make your goal one of these priorities. 

That starts with giving your goals a definitive time on your calendar. 

For example:  

Goal: I'm going to work out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 
Better Goal: I'm going to work out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after work.

When you have time slotted for your goal and nothing else can take that time, you become unstoppable.  

Step 7: Speak as if it's already done

Your brain, while incredibly complex, is also pretty easy to trick. That's why we do vision boards annually and look at them daily - the more your brain sees something, the more it believe's it's already done. The same thing goes for what you say. 

Changing your goals from something you will do in the future to something you're currently doing not tells your brain that you are committed to doing this NOW - it's not something you're putting off to a later date. 

For example:

Your Goal: I'm going to work out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after work. 
Better goal: I work out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after work.

Bonus: FOCUS on one goal at a time

My last piece of advice is to focus on one large goal at a time. If you're trying to do five things at once, you're putting 20% of your energy into 5 different things. While you might be incredibly busy, you may have nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Choose one goal that will make a huge difference in your life - and once that goal is completed - move on to the next one. 

Happy Goal-Crushing!

xoxo

Want To Start Planning Your Vision Board Party? 

1. Download the FREE vision board party planning checklist.

2. Craft your inspiring vision board workshop talk with our FREE High Impact Storytelling Journal Prompts. 

3. Plan, promote & host your first (or next) professional & profitable vision board workshop with our signature course, Sold Out Vision Board Parties.

 This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

---

About the author

Cyrene is a fun and accomplished workshop facilitator, learning and development guru and Human Resources professional. Being at the helm of Thrive Lounge has been a long-time dream. Through vision board workshops she plans to accomplish two-way learning. Sharing her vast years of knowledge to motivate and encourage others; while simultaneously getting the reward of great energy, ideas and questions to ponder back from each group. A super win-win. Please join our Thrive Lounge community so you too can benefit!

How To Turn Your LARGE Goal Into A Super Legit Action Plan

Are you one of those people that starts looking around in December wondering wtf you're going to do next year? In your head you know that you want this year to be different than the last, you want to break from your shell, do something EPIC... but you don't really now where to start. 

My first year doing a vision board was something like that...

I didn't know what I wanted to accomplish. Heck, I didn't even know what I was capable of. (At that time, I had only successfully accomplished a worthless degree, years of waitressing jobs and overall failing at adulting.) 

However, that was the year I was determined to turn my little sinking ship of life around and (even though I had no idea what I was going to do) I created an action plan that would ultimately help me figure it out. 

START WITH A PIE-IN-THE-SKY GOAL. 

Your pie in the sky goal (I also like to call this your dream goal) is a goal that is very large if you look at it from where you currently are. This is a goal that you'll need to step out of yoru comfort zone to reach. You might have to learn a new skill or leverage the help of a team to do something that you've never done before. This is a goal that, over the course of a year will stretch you. 

In my life the goal was simply to stop failing and figure out what I wanted. I planned on pursuing this to the fullest extent of my abilities and with all of my time.

When you've been doing the same thing over and over again for years, it can be hard to find a different version of yourself that is actually succeeding. However, if you take some time to believe that you can achieve more than you currently have, you'll get there. 

BREAK DOWN YOUR PIE IN THE SKY GOAL INTO MINI GOALS.

You can't eat your great-grandma's sweet potato pie in one bite... and you wouldn't try to conquer a large goal all at once either. (I know, I'm so corny, but it's true!) Reaching this large goal can seem very daunting, but to make it more manageable (and easier to navigate) you'll want to break that goal down into small pieces. These mini-goals are smaller goals that serve as checkpoints on the way to achieving your overall goal. 

In my example where I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, my mini goals would be to: 

1. Take classes in different areas to decide what professions interested me.

2. Join meetup groups to start networking in different industries.

3. Choose a graduate program to continue my education.

BREAK DOWN YOUR MINI-GOALS INTO ACTIONABLE ITEMS. 

You'll notice that each of these "mini-goals" are relatively large in itself. That's a good thing! Your mini goals can be broken down even further to the daily action items you'll need to make in order to move forward on the goals. 

In my example, to take classes in the different areas to see what professions interest me, I would have to: 

1. Research free and paid courses that would expose me to new areas.

2. Register for a new class and put effort into taking the classes and practicing the exercises and doing the homework.

3. Re-evaluating how I felt about the program and the field as a whole.

4. Determing whether I wanted to continue taking more of these classes or try out a different professional program.

Not only is the work of learning about different programs tedious, it would require me to continuously walk down paths, conquering challenges and learning new things with no idea whether it would be a worthwhile journey. However, these are necessary steps to follow if I wanted to figure out what I was good at. 

Breaking your mini goals down into smaller action items will help you see the smaller, daily actions you can to take to make your dreams a reality. That way you can start implementing them in your life asap!

The new year is a great time to re-evaluate where you are in your life and where you want to go. Starting your year off with a large goal will put you in a great position to crush your year!

xoxo

Want To Start Planning Your Vision Board Party? 

1. Download the FREE vision board party planning checklist.

2. Craft your inspiring vision board workshop talk with our FREE High Impact Storytelling Journal Prompts. 

3. Plan, promote & host your first (or next) professional & profitable vision board workshop with our signature course, Sold Out Vision Board Parties.

 This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cyrene is a fun and accomplished workshop facilitator, learning and development guru and Human Resources professional. Being at the helm of Thrive Lounge has been a long-time dream. Through vision board workshops she plans to accomplish two-way learning. Sharing her vast years of knowledge to motivate and encourage others; while simultaneously getting the reward of great energy, ideas and questions to ponder back from each group. A super win-win. Please join our Thrive Lounge community so you too can benefit!

How To Set THE RIGHT Goals In Every Area Of Your Life

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

How many times have you looked at your life only to realize that there are a TON of tiny, little things you have yet to pay attention to. 

For example... 

• Your back has been hurting for about 6 months (but it's not THAT bad)

• You haven't called your wonderful great grandmother (but you SWEAR you'll get to it soon!)

• Your room (over the last few weeks) has become a hot mess - so bad you don't know where to start

• AND.... you kinda have to make more of an effort in your work (because you've been slipping)

Sound familiar? 

I hope not, because that's MY story right now (and to make matters worse, I could easily add 5 more, but I don't want to start a pity party on a goal-setting blog (Can I give myself a #SideEye?)).

The truth is, no matter who you are, it's pretty easy to get stuck in one of those life ruts where your life slowly (but oh-so-surely) becomes a mess over time. Balls get dropped.

After a while, it become the new norm... #OwnIt

But with each new day comes the opportunity to say "it's time to make a change" and actually make an effort towards changing the way you do things.

How do you know what goals will be BEST for you? Like anything else, it all starts with a plan. 

 

STEP #1: Self Assessment: Reflect on Every Area of Your Life

Your happiness hinges on several different areas of your life. (If you're a rockstar at work, but your family is falling apart, I highly doubt you're feeling completely fulfilled in your life.) There are five key areas I like to focus on: 

Educational/Professional Development
Personal Finance
Family/Relationships
Self Care
Health/Fitness

Start with thinking about the last twelve months of your life. If you had to rate every area of your life on a scale of 1 to 6 (six being super happy!) what would you rate your overall success in each one of these areas? 

Once you know quantify how you performed in each area, it's easier to see what areas in your life are high as a kite and which areas are suffering and need resuscitation.

 

Step #2: Make a list of fulfilling activities in each of these areas

Next, brainstorm which activities that make you feel like you are living your best life in each area. Imagine you were creating a highlight reel (or basically curate your social media feed) to showcase the best moments of each of these areas, what would you include?

For each area of your life, make a list of every activity that brings you happiness, joy and every random activity that you look back and think "why did we stop doing that?" These are the activities you'll want to try to incorporate into your life. 

Step #3: Decide on what you want to focus on

Now that you have a full list of all the things that you COULD do to make you happy in all areas of your life, it's time to decide what you're going to focus on. You may not want to do them all (because ain't nobody got time fo' that) but focus on a few activities in the areas that need serious improvement and the areas that you're most passionate about. 

For example, if you have an area of your life that's severely suffering because you've spent more time in the past focusing on other things, you may decide that it's time to give that priority. On the other hand, if you're deeply engrossed in one area of your life and are happily accelerating that, you may also make the decision to continue only focusing on that one area. 

The only thing you must do is make sure that you choose to focus on the areas in your life that are most important for you. 

Step #4: Intentionally decide on performing these activities (and put time on the calendar for them)

It's not enough to come up with the activities you want to accomplish - you must also plan on doing them and make time for them. Take out your trusty planner of choice and take a look at when you will incorporate these activities into your life. 

First think about how often you'll do it. If you plan on taking a family trip, that that's likely something that will happen once in a year, but you want to also plan out time for planning the trip, researching the activities and booking everything. Put those things onto your calendar ahead of time. The moment you do this, it becomes real. 

If the task is more recurring, like date night with your s/o, then you'll want to put that time into your calendar, too. 

Next, think about what day of the week (and you can even get as granular as what time in the day you're going to take to make this happen). Giving your goals a time on your calendar makes it real - and you even start planning for making them happen. That's what makes them inevitable.

This approach to goal-setting takes into account every area of your life and gives you the chance to reflect on it and choose what's most important to you. Once you've made a decision on what's important and how you're going to enhance it, it's totally up to you to set the goals and create the change you want to see in your life

Happy Goal-Setting!

xoxo

---

Want To Start Planning Your Vision Board Party? 

1. Download the FREE vision board party planning checklist.

2. Craft your inspiring vision board workshop talk with our FREE High Impact Storytelling Journal Prompts. 

3. Plan, promote & host your first (or next) professional & profitable vision board workshop with our signature course, Sold Out Vision Board Parties.

---

About the author

Cyrene is a fun and accomplished workshop facilitator, learning and development guru and Human Resources professional. Being at the helm of Thrive Lounge has been a long-time dream. Through vision board workshops she plans to accomplish two-way learning. Sharing her vast years of knowledge to motivate and encourage others; while simultaneously getting the reward of great energy, ideas and questions to ponder back from each group. A super win-win. Please join our Thrive Lounge community so you too can benefit!