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If you followed me for any amount of time, it’s probably not news to you that I love planning and reflection. They both tend to keep me moving towards an actual goal versus letting life happen to you. They give us intention. Planning without reflection can be pretty useless for most people. So know that everything we talk about today assumes that you will revisit your goal and process on a weekly basis throughout the year. I use Hilary Rushford elegance excellence goals journal in order to do this as well as my day designer daily planner. I’ve used both of these for almost 5 years now and swear by both of them. They may work for you, or they may not, but I encourage you to find some thing that does. 

When I talk about having success in 2023, I am referring to both personal and career-based success. Whatever that looks like for you. From an entrepreneurial standpoint I have a bias towards your business serving your life. And setting it up in a way that makes the life you want cohesive with the business that you want.

That’s what I deem as successful. That might involve a revenue number at your job, or a certain amount of clients, or the creation of a new product that you’ve been dreaming of. Ideally those goals are so that you can travel more, spend more time with your family, do more spontaneous things, or have more time to do more hobbies that you enjoy.

So let’s go ahead and talk about step one, which is of course reflecting on last year. I think in order to determine what you want out of 2023, it’s worth looking at what went well and what didn’t go well in 2022. And then of course providing context to that. The start of my 2022 and all the goals that I had nearly all went to the wayside when I found out I was pregnant before we were even done with quarter one of the year. So no I did miss the opportunity for some of those goals,I don’t consider it a failure that I didn’t do much of what I set out to do in 2022 because life quite literally took on a whole new direction. My focus changed, and there were simply different demands on the table.

Assessing last year and gaps

If you had goals in 2022, be it personal or business based, how did those go? What months were your high months, and what months were your low months? And why was that? What did you find went really really well, and what continued to get pushed to the back burner? Even though maybe you wanted it to be a priority.

Did you rest more? Read more? Go on small adventures more? Did you start investing? Move? Did you start a new career? Provide some context and seasons to your last year.

This is what I believe will really set you up for success in your goal planning for 2023. We can make better decisions moving forward when we know what happened in the past, how we behaved, and why that was the case. That gives us context as to what is realistic moving forward.

Planning your goals

A common mistake that I have fallen into myself, and watch other people fall into every year is choosing way too many goals to accomplish. I see no issue with making a huge list of things that you would like to accomplish, but then categorizing them or looking at if-than type of goals. If you achieve this goal than likely these other three goals get achieved along the way. If that makes sense. 

For example, some thing that is still on the table for Nathanael and I is the goal of being location independent. For us that means living in our home for the majority of the year but may be traveling for three months of the year. This has become much more of a perhaps then a definitive goal with the pregnancy and just experiencing life with the new baby. But other goals that I have financially and with my business or what will allow the goal of location independence to become a reality if we want it to be. So that goal is contingent on other goals happening.

It’s true that you will be far more successful in achieving your goal if your focus is not being pulled in seven other directions. It also makes it easier to remain focused on that one goal if you are constantly working towards it throughout the year. So I really do encourage 2 to 3 big goals at most. That doesn’t mean the other goals can’t be on the table, but those other goals need to be kind of subsets of the big ones.

Otherwise you will undoubtedly have to let some of those goals go during the year. Better to trim the fat before hand. It’s OK if a girl needs to wait for 2024 or 2025 and beyond. Please remember that I started working on and dreaming up my Pure PROgramming course in 2018. It did not come to fruition until January 2022. 

That brings us to the next point of making sure that your goals are in alignment with your wife. I never want people to make goals without being aware of why they want to achieve that thing. What they think it will bring them. Whether that be with fitness, business, or life and relationally. So for each goal that you write down for 2023, be sure to write down next to it why you want to achieve that. What’s the reasoning behind that desire?

Alignment

Within alignment, think about if this goal makes sense for this season of your life. Take my pregnancy and the newborn phase for example. You will have a season of life coming in 2023. What is that season, and does the goal make sense? You would ask that for each one of the goals. For instance one of my goals was investing. But that got pushed to the side when we actually needed cash in the bank for our build because of our situation and me being the breadwinner and self-employed. So that investment goal didn’t match the season of life that we were approaching, even though that does still remain A top future goal. It’s simply gets pushed to 2023 rather than 2022. That goal you could say was contingent on us closing on the house and getting settled in with our finances there.

If you want to travel more, or take small adventures, why is that important to you? What does that bring your life? Why is it a priority? If you want a certain number of clients, what does that look like for the time demand of your business, and why do you want that? Why is that important to you?

Avoid goals without context or a plan 

My favorite example for this is when people make revenue goals but then can’t lay out how that revenue goal is going to happen. Manifestation is not my favorite word. Because from my experience of hearing manifestation coaches talk about it, it lacks an actual plan. You could say that I gravitate more towards spreadsheets. If someone wants to make $10,000 a month my question would be how is that going to happen? And again, what does that time demand look like? What is it going to take to get there? And creating an actual plan for that.

With that, yes there is absolutely truth to claiming a goal and writing it down before you have a plan of how it’s going to happen. I am team entertain the dream and then figure out the how.

Personal and business

When I say personal and business, this spans such a huge spectrum of possible goals. No goal is too small to be on your big list. Maybe you want to take one Friday per month off, or maybe you want to stop working at a certain time, or maybe you want to dedicate Saturdays to your online business. I don’t know what your situation is but I consider these schedules goals as well. And they can make a massive difference in how you experience your year.

If your goal around your business is to hit a certain number of clients or to grow your email list or Instagram following to a certain number, be sure that there is a plan in place for those to happen. And then look at what that means for your life outside of business.

Back to the schedule situation, it makes sense that if you want more small adventures that taking one Friday per a month fully off would allow you a time to plan your adventure. Looking at how your business in life can work together is a fabulous way to plan your goals in my opinion.

And then be sure to remember that we often think we can get a lot more done in a short period of time and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a longer period of time.

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