Time to Revisit the Goals
At the beginning of the year, I set out to create my goals for the year by using Notion to capture the wild dreams and desires I had….and then, I didn’t visit it again now. Woopsie. Normally, I am all about that goal setting and goal getting but for some reason, this year I wanted to detach myself from the identity of HAVING to achieve and instead kinda found myself to be floating around - taking jobs that came along, creating content that felt good, and just generally following my whims. While it has been awesome, I am missing a little bit of grounding that comes from having a clearer idea of what I want and the action steps required to go after it.
So, I pulled up my Notion again and took a look at the goals I had set out for myself and while some of the things I definitely forgot about, I was actually pleasantly surprised to update some of the goals that I had created for myself - whether it was checking it off completely or seeing it progress, rekindling passion and fire to refocus on said goal. It reminded me of the importance of reconciling my goal oriented action steps monthly, if not weekly. I mean, I do self portraits every week so that I can keep a running tally on my body and its changes and my accountant keeps track of my invoices and deposits to make sure they are on track for success….so why, oh why, did I get away from looking at and visiting my goals weekly/monthly? Well, if I’m being honest…it’s because I never had to worry about goals before.
Something has happened and whether it’s perimenopause/menopause, fallout from chronic stress/burnout, post-COVID anxiety/brain fog, adult ADHD, or something else entirely (or maybe a combination of them all!) - my goal achieving has come to a complete halt and my overwhelm has taken over. This has NEVER been an issue for me before and to be honest, it fucking worried me for awhile - wondering what’s wrong with me…what changed…etc. But then I realized, even if I am to find out (and I am trying!) it doesn’t make a difference to my current reality (aside from me not feeling ridiculous). So, while I search for answers I must contend with the reality that I am unable to stay focused on my goals and if they are not in front of me, I am currently less likely to have them come to fruition. This brings me to my plan moving forward.
Creating reconciliation rituals, both weekly and monthly, where I check in on ALL of it. I take stock of my goals. I look at my finances. I evaluate my engagement in relationships. I recognize what is going well and I make notes and actions steps for areas that need improvement. Now, in order for it to be a ritual that I will continue to do I need to REALLY get that dopamine flowing or else it will just get swept aside as it already has.
In order to figure what I need, I need to first acknowledge the obstacles/reasons that prevent me from focusing on said goals:
-No accountability (to self or others)
-It isn’t fun enough to keep it going (and the fun has to change up)
-It isn’t on the calendar so I don’t even know it’s happening
-No immediate/long term reward to keep me focused long term
-Fear of “FOREVER”
-Unable to do it wherever I am
-Don’t want to burden other people with my work (it’s fine if I’m teaching people, but not if I’m teaching myself)
-Taking on too many goals at once
As such, I made myself a workbook based on how I could make this process a bit more streamlined:
1. Accountability
Now, some folks like accountability from other people - but in my experience, any time I’ve done group projects or accountability plans with other people, I take their lead. So if they flake, I flake. The only one I need to be accountable to is me AND the challenge. Plus all my friends are neurodivergent or people pleasers so we will let each other slide for totally normal behaviors. At the end of the day, I really only need to be accountable to myself anyway - I’m the only one that matters/is impacted by my achievements of said goals. So, for the sake of this plan I am going to BLOG my reconciliation reports here. This means you will see weekly and monthly my progress (or lack thereof) and I think this will not only benefit me, it will benefit you. You will see that being human is the goal - not to be a perfect robot and STILL achieving goals is possible. Leading by example is a much better method than me leading a group.
2. Pleasure
I cannot even begin to stress to you how important it is for me to make my Reconciliation Ritual fucking pleasurable. I get bored so quickly of things (even when they are fun!) so for the sake of this project, I will keep the pleasure flowing with a few of my favorite methods: Going to a specific location that lights me up - weekly this looks like sitting outside or being in a fun cafe or the library, monthly this will look like renting a hotel/airbnb for a night in a cool location. Wearing something that makes me feel like the person I want to embody in my goals - this will look like different outfits for different days, but all of them will be fun. The process of selecting a Reconciliation ritual wardrobe gets me hyped just thinking about it. Workbooks that I designed to help me stay on track - y’all know I’m a sucker for notebooks and a fucking fabulous workbook. A list of affirmations/prayer/statement to stay before I begin the process and a list of affirmations/prayer/statement to close out the process - there’s just something magical about creating a loop/portal to contain my dreams. I may add a few more tools/rituals to this process - but it will all be in the name of pleasure!
3. Specific date/time ON the calendar
If it’s not on the calendar, it ain’t happening - simple as that. I learned this one a long time ago for me - if it isn’t on there I have no idea it’s happening and therefore it won’t. This is one reason why I am further away from my goals, because outta sight, outta mind. For me, I want to do my Reconciliation Ritual on a Monday around 8pm - since it will be weekly, it will only take a few hours to create the ritual and check in. Plus, I like that it’s at the beginning of the week so if my previous week got sidetracked, I feel I will have a game plan going into the next one. As for the monthly ones - that will probably require a bit of flexibility at least until 2024 since I’ve already booked myself with travel + workshops + meetings. However, for moving into 2024, I would like to have it at the end of one month, beginning of the next month so that way I am clear and focused for the month ahead. So that would look like: Dec 30, 31, Jan 1 and Jan 30,31, Feb 1 etc.
4. Your girl needs a reward system
Like most humans, I need to see that progress is being made or else I get boooooored. I realized my favorite thing about my online goal list on Notion was the little pie charts showing me how much I had accomplished, so I made sure to include the pie charts in my monthly reconciliation sheets to get me jazzed and refocused! With each goal crossed off, I will also reward myself something on my list of “someday” items - things I want, but don’t need. This can be purchases, experiences, gear, or just something fun!
5. I need to set a time limit
Now, this might sound counterintuitive in that I am creating a plan for long term consistency, so why the fuck would I be limiting my consistency? Well, if my brain knows it’s going to go on forever, it immediately drops the satisfaction level down. If I can’t see the end it becomes super overwhelming very quickly. So I tell myself “I am committing to this for 3 months…just to see what happens.” At 3 months, I can reevaluate and see the benefits and also acknowledge where I might need to make tweaks to do “another 3 month project”. If I turn things into a project I am much more likely to focus on it longer since I know it’s not….forever and ever and ever and ever and ever…you get the point. This is one reason why I made my workbook a 3 month workbook!
6. It needs to be accessible
In order for this to work, I need the Ritual to be relatively accessible so it doesn’t matter if I am in a hotel room, a cabin in the woods, on an airplane, at my sister’s house or in my office - I should be able to create space and time for me to take stock of the present. Using an efficient model of the workbook that is accessible on my phone allows me to quickly input my data and check in on my goals. Because it will be put into my calendar (with an alarm!) I will receive a notice that it’s time to “check in” with my goals and this will look like a quick list of my goals and updating their metrics - depending on where I am I can take more time if I want to elaborate on some of the progress (or lack thereof), BUT if all I can do is update my goal progress then that is still better than nothing and reminds me of what I am to be focusing on! It will be interesting to see how this goes - I also have my physical workbook copy and I am hoping I’ll see be able to stick to it while I am away, but I guess we shall see!
7. Setting boundaries with people
This one might be the hardest yet. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that as soon as I travel to hang with folks, my routines jump out the window in lieu of lazing around in the mornings waiting for folks to wake up or just ignoring my routines altogether in order to do what the group wants to do. I think having it in my schedule is going to make it easier to set boundaries with folks (at least this has helped with other things) that what I have to do is non-negotiable. And again, whether I take 5 minutes to do it or 50, the point is that I am showing up for myself and the person I want to be.
8. Narrowing my focus
“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” is a sticky note that has been on my computer for the last 3 years. It is a reminder that while I am capable of doing many things, it isn’t in my best interest. For the sake of this project, I am going to be limiting myself to 5 priority goals to focus on for the next 3 months. 2 of these will be high priority/more intensive/outcome focused and the other 3 will be more consistency/process focused. I noticed that a lot of my goals are focused around the theme of writing, so I am going to break those up to be a little less writing heavy and bring in 2 goals that are seemingly unrelated (but will still impact the writing!). The narrowing of focus is SO important to getting things done efficiently and effectively - now the hard part is choosing the things I want to focus on!
9. Lastly, remembering that whether or not I meet my goals - I am still valuable, worthy, and enough
This last one is the most important one for me. As a lifelong achiever, I am learning to separate myself from my achievements - understanding that I am worthy of love, deservingness, and respect despite how many things I cross off my goal list. Having had this shift in how I set goals/achieve I've had to grieve how I used to do the things while replacing that with learning how to do them in a different way - but the whole way through, I’ve come to realize that people still love me, appreciate me, and value me even if I’m not “kicking ass left, right, and center”.
