5 Quotes About Goals to Keep You Motivated All Year

Setting, and keeping, goals has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve had for the last few years. As I’ve written before, my confidence has taken a knock a few times in the last decade and it’s been a fight and a struggle to get back to where I was previously… almost over and over again!

But I find setting goals, and tasks for myself based on those goals, very cathartic and healing in a lot of ways. It keeps me focused on moving forward day-to-day instead of continually thinking about whatever it is that’s happened (being laid off, getting a rejection for a job I wanted badly, whatever).

I know for many people, setting and keeping goals is a struggle. Trust me when I say: me too. I love setting goals, but it’s easy to lose track of them day-to-day. I have a whole post about setting goals that are realistic for you and your life, while keeping an eye on timeliness, here.

However, I also wanted to share a few quotes that I’ve found particularly helpful in my goal setting and keeping my mindset positive and future-focused. I hope you love them! Don’t forget to Pin them if you find them particularly helpful.

I’m a quote collector (I have notebooks full of them!). If you find posts like this helpful or fun, please let me know and I’ll add more of them to my calendar. Happy Wednesday!

5 Exercises for Setting Goals That Stick

A few weeks ago, I asked my Instagram followers what their biggest struggle was when it came to setting goals. I’ve been doing a 90-day goal challenge (as well as a 100 day, inspired by Elsie Larson at a Beautiful Mess) and it’s gotten me thinking a lot about setting, and keeping, goals.

I’ve always been an incredibly goal-oriented person. I am always working on something when it comes to a big goal—but some goals have always been easier for me to meet than others. In the past, I’ve never quite known why I could win NaNoWriMo every single year… but not be able to stick to meal prepping or other goals that seem like it should be a no brainer to hit.

As I’ve written before, I’ve been spending a lot of time in therapy learning how to validate myself, rather than seek out external validation. I really believe that external validation combined with internal validation is the root of why some goals are easier to hit than others. When it comes to completing NaNoWriMo, I often get a rush of validation from other people: friends reaching out to say congratulations, strangers on the internet, my writing group. Validation comes from everywhere and it’s a good feeling to be validated. I can trust that validation. I know it will be there.

But when it comes to other goals, like finishing a workout series or doing my daily writing… those goals aren’t as public. No one is going to cheer me on when I announce I’ve gone a month without cancelling a therapy appointment. No one is going to send me a nice text to boost my spirits because I managed to fold and put away all the laundry. There are some things we will receive external validation for and some things we won’t.

Relying on external validation for all our goals will only make us give up on goals easily. This obviously isn’t the only reason we struggle to complete goals, however. There are lots of ways we can get distracted or be unsure. Here are a few examples that I was sent on Instagram:

Here’s a summary:

• Setting too many goals

• Settings goals that are not achievable

• Finding goals that make sense 90 days later

• Staying committed

That makes it pretty easy to address the issues we all seem to have with goals, right? Most importantly, it seems everyone struggles to set realistic goals that stick—or that make sense after a month. I hope these 5 exercises will help you set better goals in 2020. Think of these as separate exercises that you can do one at a time, but also steps to creating goals that make sense in your life. Let’s get started!

1. Use a Calendar to Set Your Goals.

This task (or exercise) solves the issue of: how can I make my goals achievable?

Firstly, make sure that any goal you set has an end in sight. On-going, long term goals can be more challenging, especially if you’re used to feel defeated about your goals. Set an end date on the calendar. Think in 90-day or 100-day chunks.

Secondly, set a measurable results for your goal. Here are a few examples:

• I’m going to post 3 days a week and share to Pinterest daily until May 1 instead of I’m going to have a successful blog.

• I’m going to go to 3 networking events a week until June 1 instead of I’m going to grow my business and/or I want X number of clients this year.

• I’m going to work out 2 days a week until April 1 instead of I’m going to be more active.

Basically: when setting your goals, think in specifics: what will you measure, how will you measure it, and when will you be done measuring it (and ready to set a new goal). Set these days on your calendar.

2. Use Goals to Improve Instead of Punish.

Sometimes, we think of New Years Resolution, or yearly goals, as punishment. “I’m getting this goal because I’ve been doing bad and now I need to suffer to be good.” First of all, I assure you: you are already good. With my son, I make sure to reiterate that everyone is good, they just make bad choices sometimes. But even bad choices don’t deserve punishment 100% of the time.

Basically, don’t set up your goals as punishments for your own perceived bad behavior. So what if you gained weight in 2019? How do you feel? If you feel sluggish and unwell, adding a few goals to work out and eat healthier might make you feel happier—but they aren’t punishments to your body, they are ways for you to treat yourself and your brain better.

Your goals should be created with the intention to improve your life—not to make you feel miserable. Aim for things that you know will make you feel good and won’t make you feel miserable and unhappy day-to-day.

Here are a few examples:

• I’m going to eat 1 vegetable with every meal instead of I’m only going to eat X number of calories every single day.

• I’m going to work out 2 days a week instead of I’m going to work out for 2 hours every single day.

• I’m going to write every day for at least 20 minutes instead of I’m going to finish my novel by February 1.

3. Break Your Goal into Week-by-Week Tasks.

Let’s take one of our example goals, because they’re very easy. “I’m going to post 3 days a week and share to Pinterest daily” is an easy one. What would be my weekly tasks?

• Task 1: Write 3 blog posts for the next week (working in advance!)

• Task 2: Share to Pinterest and repin every single day.

Easy, right?

Let’s look at a more challenging example.

Here’s another sample goal: “I’m going to grow my business by 10 clients by June 1.” Here are a few sample tasks:

• Task 1: Go to 3 networking events a week.

• Task 2: Send 2 emails per week.

• Task 3: Finish website.

• Task 4: Post on LinkedIn 2 times per week.

Those tasks are a little heavier than the other goal and there are more of them. But do you see the process? Looking at your goal, what are the tasks that you’ll need to do every single week to achieve them? If your goal is to work out 2 days per week, then your task will be to add work out blocks to your weekly calendar. If your goal is grow your blog, you might add in social media management, developing products to promote your blog, and more. It just depends on your goal and what is achievable for you!

4. Copy Week-by-Week Tasks into Your Planner.

This is an easy one. Take those week-by-week tasks and put them in your planner. Add them to specific dates with deadlines. Make them appointments. Here’s an example; if one of your tasks is to post to Instagram 3 days a week to grow your blog, you might add “Post to Instagram” as a task 3 days a week to reoccur until your chosen date. Whatever your task is, add it to your planner, your calendar, whatever you use.

This exercise solves the issue of losing focus on your goal, and staying committed, throughout the weeks after New Years Day.

5. Incorporate Weekly Tasks into To Do List.

If you make a daily or weekly to do list, add those weekly tasks to your to do list when you get to that week. This makes them tangible tasks to complete on a deadline, along everything else you do. As you work on each task, know you’re getting closer to your goal. As you work through the weeks, you can reassess. Let’s look an example.

If your goal is to grow your blog, and you want to pin to Pinterest 3 days a week, but you notice that your pins aren’t having much traction, you might need to reassess your strategy, your boards, and more. That might become a secondary task that you need to address next week to make your weekly task more effective. You might also address whether your blog posts are in line with what your ideal reader wants, or provide enough information to appeal to readers.

Meeting Goals & Making Decisions: My November 2019 Wrap Up

Happy December!

You’ll be happy to know that this month’s wrap up will be significantly less maudlin than last months. A good thing too. November was a significantly better month than October in a lot of ways. I feel like I’m overcoming a lot of mental blocks when it comes to setting and achieving goals, and moving forward in my career.

Let’s jump into this wrap up!

1. I Switched Up My Instagram Content

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A post shared by Michelle | Blogger & Marketer (@michellelocke6) on Nov 5, 2019 at 5:20pm PST

You may have noticed a lot of changes over at my Instagram; I’ve been posting more about goal setting, the mental aspect of being laid off/starting my own business (?)/being a woman in the workplace, as well as taking time for myself and self-care and self improvement. These are all things I care about and think about a lot, but haven’t ever really talked about in my social media presence before.

If those are things you’re interested in too, give me a follow over on Instagram!

2. I Started Working On Daily Goals

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A post shared by Michelle | Blogger & Marketer (@michellelocke6) on Nov 9, 2019 at 4:20pm PST

One thing I’ve been realizing more and more lately is that I need a routine in place.

When Forrest was younger, I found it much easier to be very regimented and organized about my day. I did the same things every day and it helped ease my anxiety and improve my life. But in the last 18 months, my routines have really fallen apart; I was able to keep things organized for Forrest, but I felt like I never was 100% dedicated to a routine for myself. Danny and I stopped going to the gym as Forrest’s bedtime routine got more and more challenging.

In the past month, I started working on my daily goals: day-to-day, I set little goalposts for myself to reach. A few examples are making my bed every day (which helps me to feel accomplished), getting dressed every day, and making sure to go on a daily walk. Those are just a few things that help me organize my day and start building a routine. I’ve also started blocking out my time for my to do list and making sure I actually get things done—even if I have to force myself.

A big thing I’ve realized is that the burn out I’ve been feeling for a year or more has matched up with feeling like I don’t have a good daily routine in place. I’m hoping that the more I work on it, the more I’ll feel myself falling into a natural routine. And I’m hoping that adding in a good work out routine eventually will come a lot easier.

3. I Started Addressing my Lack of Confidence

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A post shared by Michelle | Blogger & Marketer (@michellelocke6) on Nov 16, 2019 at 6:20pm PST

Anyone who has read my blog for a long time knows one thing to be true: i’m pretty upfront about my lack of confidence.

I’ve always been a shy, soft spoken person. I don’t make waves. In therapy, we’ve been working on my need for external validation for nearly everything I do; I’m often overly concerned with the opinions of other people, worrying that what they think of me is more important than how I feel about what I’m doing. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I noticed this side of me getting worse after I graduated from college; when I didn’t have the validation of school and grades, I found myself really struggling with happiness and feeling confident.

Building emotional confidence and self confidence, particularly in my abilities and my work ethic, is a huge barrier for me in terms of achieving what I want to in my career. On one hand, I firmly believe that I’m good at what I do; on the other hand, I often hold myself back, not completing tasks and not following through, because I worry that it won’t be good enough, that other people won’t like it, or whatever.

I feel like I’ve really challenged that internalized belief this month and I’m excited to see how I continue to work on this.

Those were my 3 big November takeaways. We had a lovely Thanksgiving, obviously; we were supposed to go to Idaho, but ended up not being able to make it due to the Pass being totally snowed in! That was a huge disappointment, but we all coped as we could.

How was your November?

Setting Goals for November (& 2020!)

I’ll be honest: I really didn’t think my 31st trip around this planet would be quite this dramatic. While the past 3 months have been particularly rough, it’s generally been kind of a weird year for me. Actually, the last several years have been super weird in ways I wasn’t always totally prepared for. In many ways, I’ve lost a lot of the wind in my sails that I had previously. My motivation? Gone. My productivity? Non-existent.

I’m working on getting better about it (and part of it is going to therapy and improving other parts of my life that need it).

Several years ago (like in… 2013?) I started doing this thing where I set small goals for myself every single day to pull myself out of a pretty serious slump. I would basically try to do something specific every single day for a week, then pick something else the next week—basically to get myself back into the groove of doing those things. I remember one of my goals being “making my own dinner” (instead of like eating cereal out of a box) everyday and another being “get dressed” every day. Those little baby steps really helped me at that time and I’ve realized I need to start doing things like that now.

It feels so weird to me sometimes that for a long stretch of my life, I was so regimented, motivated, and on top of everything in my life—granted, I was in college, so it wasn’t really that hard. But man! How things have changed!

The hard part is that, of course, I have a lot more responsibilities than I did in 2013 and sometimes they can be incredibly overwhelming in a way that I don’t know how to deal with.

Anyway, that’s a very personal intro to say: I, just like everyone else, am working on who I am and who I want to be; I want to be a better version of myself and I assume you also want to be a better version of yourself; and I hope that learning about my process can help you a little bit. Ultimately, my goal for blogging has always been to share a little bit of my life and help other people in whatever way I can—whether you are looking for a new foundation or are anxious about your career.

As I said, setting small goals has been a huge help to me in the past. For the past week, I’ve been hemming and hawing about how to get myself back in gear and feeling like myself again. What can I do to make things easier? I’ve reorganized my planners & journals, I’ve starting writing down a master to do list of everything I’ve been avoiding for 3 months, and I’ve written down a series of baby steps to help myself get back on the wagon. I wanted to walk through a few of my goals, share what I’m doing, and how I’m implementing everything.

So, without further ado, here are my goals for the end of October into November, and how they translate into my long-term goals for 2020.

1. Pick one weekly goal every week.

I have a planner from 52 Lists (which I highly recommend!) and I’ve started using it to keep track of my weekly master to do list (basically, the to list I have had basically exactly the same for about 12 weeks now), as well as my weekly goals. Here are a few examples of my weekly goals for the next several weeks:

• Take a walk daily.

• Speak to someone besides Danny, my mom, or Forrest every day.

• Journal.

• Get dressed and/or make myself presentable.

I know a lot of those seems really basic (get dressed!?) but let me tell you: the past 6 months have been some of the hardest for me in terms of doing basic, every day “normal” tasks. It goes without saying that I haven’t been having an easy time. It’s hard to talk about, but in many ways, I’m trying to reteach myself how to function every single day as someone other than Forrest’s mother. When things were hardest for me, and I was at my most low mentally, it was easiest for me to channel everything into “do it for Forrest, just get Forrest to school” or “just make sure Forrest is fed and happy”, which took the onus off of me. It was mentally a relief, but I’ve been wearing leggings + baggy t-shirt everyday for a year and a half now; it’s probably time to do something about that.

Anyway, I’m working on getting myself back into the swing of things. Speaking of which…

2. Create & maintain a schedule.

The hardest part of having a child has been the lack of schedule sometimes. When you’re a stay-at-home-mom, you aren’t going anywhere. No one is depending on you, or asking you for anything.

In 2014 and 2015, I was going to work everyday. Waking up, taking a shower, getting dressed, going to work. After I had Forrest, that schedule started to erode. No one really talks about this (or maybe they do, I just haven’t seen it), but having a child really does throw everything sideways. For 3 and a half years, I’ve woken up at 5:30 am or earlier and immediately had a small person attached to me. Maybe sometimes, he napped away from me, but most of the time, he didn’t. If I woke up in the morning, I might have time to make coffee, but not shower; I might have enough time to get dressed in somethings besides leggings (or, maybe not!!), but showering was often out of the question. My schedule eroded. It became wake up to crying baby, get him, feed him, get him changed and dressed, make coffee in a rush, put on clothes that don’t make me feel awful about myself, and get him to my mom’s so I could get to work. Or, if I was home with him, it was jumping into whatever activity I had planned, doing laundry, cleaning, or whatever.

Basically: I need a schedule again. I have to start taking care of myself in the morning again.

It’s challenging because Forrest already wakes up early, so waking up any earlier is extremely painful. Parenthood makes you tired. I’m also 31 now (happy birthday to me!) and I need more sleep than ever, it feels like. Stress, anxiety, depression, and a constant heavy mental load mean I’m just a lot more tired than I used to be—and probably have a headache on top of it.

However, even if I’m working at home, I realize I need a schedule. I need to have expectations. Even if it means just putting on a bra and a different pair of leggings for the day at home with Forrest, that’s probably enough.

So, yes, one of my biggest goals for November and December is starting to have structure in my life again. I need it, I’ve missed it, and I’ve got to do it if I want to feel better anytime soon.

3. Finish NaNoWriMo.

It goes without saying: my biggest goal for November is to finish NaNoWriMo!!! I’m really excited for my story this year and it’s honestly the one thing propelling me through what has been a not-so-great month otherwise.

4. Plan & launch one product before March 2020.

Some of the sneakiest of my readers noticed I had casually added a Products page to my website and then promptly removed it. (It technically still exists, but is in progress!) I’ve had this idea to start selling small ebooks for about a year now, but it makes me nervous. I launched an e-course as a tester a few months ago and it seriously fizzled, but that was partly my fault. One of the things I find most difficult is creating buzz for my own content and really selling it. I don’t like being a salesman, but I’ve realized if I want to be in control of my own life and work, I need to try something different—and selling myself as a freelance writer (and a good one!) means doing sales.

I’ve had several ideas for ebooks and workbooks for a long time, but actually going through with it has been incredibly challenging. I’m my own worst critic and I realize I just need to do it, if I’m ever actually going to get anything done. So yes!! Watch this space!!