Are you ready to learn the essential goal-setting method?
I have been goal-setting publicly on this blog since 2011! Can you believe it? I’ve tried so many different goal-setting methods but I’ve really perfected my goal-setting method and I can’t wait to share it with you.
The essential annual goal-setting method is a mish-mash of Danielle Laporteās Desire Map, Chalene Johnsonās Push and a decade of my own (Robyn Pineault) planning experience.
And I’ve finally taken the plunge to create my own planner that you can use this goal-setting method with! See I was a fan for years of Danielle Laporte’s Desire Map planner but then she stopped producing them and broke my heart. So I’m reviving and revamping the format and making it my own and creating the pages just like I’d like to have them. And I’m hoping you’ll love it as well. It’ll be available for sale next month so get on the waitlist to find out when it launches.
The 8-Step Essential Goal-Setting Method
Let me walk you through how I annually set goals…
Step 1: Choose Your Core Desired Feelings
How do you want to feel as you move through the year?
How do you want to feel as you achieve or go after different goals?
Take some time to write down all your desired feelings for next year and then pick 3 – 4 which will be your Core Desired Feelings. And if you need some help here is a Pinterest Library for you to scroll through.
If you’re having trouble deciding upon them, pause, go to Step 2 and then come back to this section.
Step 2: Life Category Audit
While I’m a fan of perpetual motion, sometimes we have to glance back in the rearview mirror. In this step, you’ll take a look back at the last year and do a life category audit. Take a look at everything from relationships to health to career and more and rank them from 1 (not going so well) to 10 (Iāve got this figured out).
Take a look at which life categories didn’t score well.
How do you wish you felt in that area of your life?
If you struggled to narrow your CDFs down to 3 – 4, go back to that section and decide how you’d like to feel to improve those lowest-scoring areas of your life.
Step 4: Goals/Intentions In Alignment With Your Core Desired Feelings
Your next step is to map out what goals/intentions are in alignment with your CDFs.
Step 5: Annual Goals By Life Category
Now it’s time to map out annual goals for each of your life categories. Starting with the categories where you scored the lowest.
Step 6: Goals By Calendar Months
From there, map out time-based annual goals for specific months.
Step 7: Schedule Non-Time-Based Goals
Then you’ll map out non-time-based annual goals in and around those that have to happen at specific times so you give yourself enough time to achieve them. Remember to schedule your lowest-scored category goals first. When you focus on optimizing your life other goals just seem to fall into place more easily.
You can either do this at the beginning of the year or at the start of a new month. I recommend writing down your goals for the month on the monthly spread calendar page. Then on the weekly spread pages, I love to write down 3 weekly goals and then reverse engineering those goals to have at least 3 daily goals to work towards your weekly goals.
At the end of the month, I love reflecting on what went well, recognizing the good in the month and the achievements and then recharging energy for the next month.
And then rinse and repeat the monthly process throughout the year.
I’m adding a new element to my annual goal-setting, and planning method and it’s called value statements.
I’ve discovered that by creating value statements before I plan out my year has become a huge game changer for me. I can’t wait to walk you through how I wrote them out, how they guided my planning for 2023 and how much has come to fruition already.
In the fall of 2022, I had the pleasure of attending a retreat my friend and psychotherapist Alison Villa hosted in Durham County. We stayed at the beautiful stone house at Glencolton farm and she took a few of us (from our online therapy group) through her Values Reset program.
Now without giving away too much of the goods from her program, I wanted to walk you through a little bit of the process and the resulting value statements that I’m using to guide my life and how I set goals.
If she ever decides to offer this as an online program I highly recommend taking it!
The Value Statement Process
The Dream Big Buckets
In the Values Reset program, we sat down and dreamed big in different areas of our lives including what we value around family, couple, community, location, home, food, extended family, travel, possessions, transportation, how we spend our time, and an other category. I chose my other category to be around hobbies or leisure. When we went home from the retreat we were also encouraged to spend some time writing down what we value around a career bucket.
We were guided to write down the things that were important to us and asked questions that also helped prompt our thinking or inspired us to write down things that we wanted in that area of our lives. The only caveat was that time and money were not to be considered an issue. We joked that some people, like my husband, needed the prompt, “Write down things as if you had a f*ck ton of money”. Sometimes it’s all about perspective.
Due to only spending 2 days at the retreat, after filling out all our dream big buckets we were asked to prioritize our top 3 categories for writing out our value statements. So this is where I brought in my life category ranking system from my goal-setting method.
So in my goal-setting method, I do a life category audit and score each category from 1 to 10. 1 being I’m not happy in this area of my life and 10 being I’ve got this alllll figured out. I then prioritize setting goals for the life categories that I want to improve upon (or scored the lowest in). So this is where I focused on writing out value statements first for the categories where I felt I wasn’t truly living in alignment with my values. After the retreat, I took the time to write our value statements for every life category. I even put them into pretty images (which I’ll share throughout this blog post) so I could print them out and put them somewhere where I could see them every day (I chose my office).
When I completed my life category audit at the end of 2022 I ranked travel and leisure the lowest and then couple, career, health, fitness, spiritual / stress management, and friendships. So I had a lot of value statements to prioritize.
The Value Statement Writing Process
Travel & Hobbies Value Statements
Let’s start with Travel and Hobbies as these were my lowest-scored categories.
So after looking at my brain dump boxes, I pulled out a few things that stood out to me.
From there we were coached to write 2-3 sentences that described our values for that category. You’ll notice many of my value statements start with “I value” or “We value”. When I got home from the retreat I walked my husband through the process and shared some of my value statements that involve him. He helped add or edit them so those value statements that involve Mike start with “We value.”
Now let me walk you through how I’ve used my value statements to guide my goal-setting this year. Since I always share my 2023 goals on my blog (here is the post for reference). I used these value statements to goal set in Travel, Couple and Friendships.
Travel: I planned out the 3 trips at the beginning of the year, put them on the calendar and then booked them.
My husband and I travelled to the Dominican Republic in March for our annual honeymoon (which I’ll classify as a relaxing trip). We travelled in August to Vancouver Island with our twins and explored 3 parts of the island (so I’m classifying this one as our adventure trip). I travelled to Austin, Texas for a web3 conference in April, I’m heading to Salt Lake City in September for dÅTERRA’s annual convention and I’m potentially heading to Poland in November for one of my web3 clients’ events. For next year, I’m already planning our annual canoe trip to Algonquin Park. After hiking the twins around Vancouver Island they are ready for an adventurous canoe trip with a few portages (ok maybe at least one) next year.
Now about the working remotely part in the winter. I’m truly considering us becoming sunbirds next year. And it’s due to writing this out as part of my value statement. You’ll see it on my Travel and my Location value statements. I am actively starting to think about where we might live during the winter next year so we can get ample sunlight as Ottawa winters are just becoming too draining for me and my health.
Hobbies: I have made an effort to take one yoga class weekly. Which is covered in my Fitness goal for the year. I have a reminder set up in my reminders app for every Sunday to remind me to book my weekly Yoga class on Tuesday. I’m taking the Strength & Stretch at Yogatown Barrhaven with my yoga teacher trainer Aleysha Derksen which is just the perfect class for me to take each week.
I’ve dedicated time to hunting each spring and fall. We’ve prioritized time hiking and now I just need to map out where I can fit in some biking.
I go out stand-up paddleboarding at the cottage. And as I heal my MS flare and liver health I’ll then prioritize healing my pelvic floor so I can get back to road & trail running. From there I’ll see when and where I can tackle the more adventurous hobbies that are begging me to try.
Couple & Community Value Statements
Couple: There are several things that I was yearning for in my relationship with my husband. I hold utmost importance on us being on the same page each week and communicating clearly with each other what’s going on in our lives. So scheduling a weekly date night, a weekly schedule check-in and going on daily dog walks in the morning has been everything to me.
I have a reminder that I first planned out in Asana but then moved to the Reminder app to remind myself on the 1st of every month to plan out our date nights for the month and line up grandparents to come over or hire a babysitter. We’ve only missed one or two so far this year so I’m loving the time I get to connect with my husband.
Community: After being ostracized by friends and family over the past few years finding a community where we feel at home was important to us. One of my goals around friendships this year was to book a monthly friendship date to truly make important friendships a priority. While I’m not truly sure how to build that community around us we are making baby steps and prioritizing the right friendships so we can focus on building the community we value and envision.
Family & Extended Family Value Statements
These two value statements are also nicely paired together:
Family: While I wrote this out individually, I edited this completely with my husband when I got home from the retreat so it reflects both our values. This process showed me that we are very much on the same wavelength with many things. He pointed out that at the beginning of this year, I made an effort to not only schedule weekly couple date nights but also monthly Daddy/Daughter, Mother/Son dates and monthly Daddy/Son, Mother/Daughter dates. Since our attention is often pulled in many directions when we’re together ensuring we have one on one time not only as a couple but as parent-to-child as well. So Mike helped me add the last sentence of our value statement.
Extended Family: We truly have beautiful relationships with both sets of our parents and watching them flourish and grow relationships with our twins has been so important to us. So this value statement was crafted based on time spent with my family who are local to Ottawa, my husband’s family who live several hours away and also dear friends who have become like family in the last 2 years.
Home & Location Value Statements
Home and Location are also so intricately tied together. And both of these value statements are very much in the dream big category. While I’d like to say I’m trying to figure out how to make these happen within a year these will probably be a little further out for us based on current circumstances that we are prioritizing. So let me share some questions that helped me dream big in these areas and thus craft the statements.
Home: What does your physical home look like? What do you see out the windows? How much land or lack thereof are you on? What aspects of the home light you up? For me, I wrote out my value statement and then showed it to my husband when I got home. He added a few things to the value statement that were intricately linked to his values. Can you tell which part was his addition? I can’t wait to build towards this dream and see where it brings us.
Location: I decided to share Home and Location together because where we build our home is very much tied to location. My Travel value statement is also linked to location especially when it comes to the snowbird mentality I’m hoping to adopt shortly for our lives. For location, I also shared this with my husband and he added his part. Can you tell which addition came from him?
Food, Possessions & Transportation Value Statements
I had fun creating these three value statements:
Food: Since moving back to Ottawa in 2021 I have focused immensely on building relationships with local farmers and I’m pretty proud to say that 90% of our food is sourced directly from farms or farmer’s markets. I’ve even learned to preserve food to make our food last longer and rely less on grocery stores.
Our current grocery shopping is snacks and juice for the kids, oranges, bananas, avocados and coconut water. Oh and the occasional produce that I can’t find at a farmer like brussel sprouts, parsnips and carrots.
I’m really proud of how we nourish our family and the treats part is real as I have pictures on my phone of the babes eating Smores around the campfire at our friends’ place or our cottage with faces covered in chocolate.
Possessions: This value statement was interesting to write. I was inspired by some of my retreat goers to also focus on minimalism. And while I don’t think it’s a true value of mine, I do believe we can purge many of the items that we have and live with less. This became very true for me as we moved our lives across the country in a short time span and we realized just how many things we had that we necessarily didn’t or don’t need.
I added in the rose gold because I’ve been very drawn to decorating my home office with that metal and colour. And after buying cheap clothing for years I know it’s time to invest in quality pieces since I truly don’t love shopping and would appreciate not having to shop for new clothes each year.
Transportation: This was an interesting category to think about. I hadn’t really thought about transportation as a value but I had fun writing out this value statement nonetheless. While many of my fellow retreatgoers started dreaming about the make and model of the car they wanted, I got more practical. See our family has always valued purchasing cars with high re-sell values so that we can make the most of our purchase when replacing cars. This is something we’re trying to do every 5 – 6 years to ensure we are getting a great re-sell cost from the vehicle we currently drive.
I’ve driven Honda CRVs for years and my husband has a Toyota Tundra. Because we have two kids and two dogs, we are finally thinking about replacing the CRV with something larger so we can all drive to the cottage in one vehicle vs. two!
I loved putting in the part about how we enjoy trips via different travel methods as I thought that would be a fun way to incorporate variety into our family’s life as we book annual trips together.
Time & Career Value Statements
Last but not least we have Time & Career value statements which I believe are intricately linked. While at the retreat we didn’t even touch on career as it is such a loaded one and requires dedicated time.
So during the retreat, we dreamed big about how we spend our time and then when we got home we did a remote session to set up our career statements.
Time: I asked myself how do I want to spend my day. Because so much of my day is centered around career I had a really hard time separating the two. So I asked myself questions around moments in my day. What was important for me in how I start my day? What was important for me in how I end my days? How and when do I spend time with my family? And then how and when do I spend time working and making money for our family?
Career: We were challenged to dream big here in terms of how much we earn. We were challenged to look at how much we make annually, increase it and then increase it again. So this is the number I landed on. The fun part of this value statement was to define not only how much I make but also how I spend my time earning this revenue. How many days do I want to work a week? What physical location do I want to work in? What sort of people am I working for and with? And how do I take care of myself and what do I outsource so I can make this all happen!?
I hope you found this post useful, This year I’m publishing my first weekly planner called The Essential Planner which will walk you through my goal-setting method. Get on the waitlist below to be the first to find out about the official launch date:
Well here we are again, the beginning of a new year and I’ve got some goals to get. Without further ado, here are my 2023 Goals & Intentions.
So the first thing I do when planning out my goals for a new year is to do an audit on life categories based on the year before. I score them from 1 – 10. 10 means I feel like I accomplished all my goals and feel really good about this life category. 1 means I’m struggling in this life category, or I want to achieve certain things I haven’t yet tackled or it’s important to improve this life category. So here is how I scored my life categories in 2022.
Life Category Audit for 2022
Career – 6
Financial – 9
Health – 6
Fitness – 6
Nutrition – 8
Travel – 5
Home – 9
Spiritual / Stress Management – 6
Couple – 6
Family – 9
Friendships – 6
Leisure / Self-Development – 5
Based on this audit, I know that I’ll want to focus on Travel and Leisure first in 2023. From there I looked at all the categories I ranked as a 6 and then prioritized them just based on a gut feeling of where I wanted to focus. I’ll start with Career, Couple, Friendships, Health, Fitness, and then Spiritual/Stress Management. And then to round out the remainder of my life category focus in 2023 I have Nutrition, Home, Family, and then Financial.
My Intentions for 2023
The next step I do is to decide how I want to feel in different areas of my life. I choose 4-5 words and these become my core desired feelings for the year. I search on Pinterest for “Core Desired Feelings Library” and look through the different images there. When words stick out to me I write them down beside a life category on a blank sheet of paper. From there I circled a few that really resonated with me. And these 4 words stuck out to me this year. Wonder, Connected, Energized, and Enriched.
Wonder – when I was looking at my life categories and scoring how I felt about them in 2022, travel scored the lowest. This makes sense as I was landlocked to Canada for a while and it just wasn’t a priority with young kids. It’ll be a top focus for me in 2023 so I want to feel WONDER wherever I travel next year AND in how I approach my hobbies and self-development.
Energized – When it comes to my health, fitness, stress management, and nutrition I want to feel ENERGIZED. From the ways that I move my body, to what goals I’m tackling to optimize my health to how I’m nourishing my body. This also applies to how I approach my career, how I tackle stress management and my spiritual relationship with God.
Enriched – When it comes to relationships I want to feel ENRICHED by them. From friendships that I’m nurturing to the people, we surround ourselves with. My husband and I sat down and wrote out a value statement about community together. We want to feel safe & ENRICHED by the families we surround ourselves with. They are focused on wellness, curiosity & being heart-led. They are living an active outdoor lifestyle where everyone prioritizes play, feeling connected, and supporting one another.
Connected – When it comes to my family and my husband I want to feel CONNECTED. I want us to always feel present with each other. I value being present & connected through monthly & weekly planning, date nights, daily walks, and family time.
2023 Goals By Life Category
So after I decide on my core desired feelings for the year, I plan out my 2023 goals by life category.
I organize my life category goals in the order that I outlined above. After I look at my goals, I map the ones that are time bound to a calendar and then fill in the gaps based on the short or long-term goals I’ve set for the year. This allows me to see if everything is doable or if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Finally, I’ll reverse engineer the larger goals in Asana like I’m project managing a marketing campaign at work š
Travel
Pre-kids, I had set a goal to always take 2 trips a year. I’ve always loved taking one adventure-based trip and one relaxing trip a year. This past year, on a retreat I took in October, we did a values reset program and wrote values statements for different areas of our lives. As I was writing down all the things that were important for travel and couple, I wrote down that I would really value going on a trip with Mike every year. I announced loudly to the group that I didn’t understand why honeymoons are reserved for only after a wedding so I decided Mike and I deserve a honeymoon trip every year. This goal is now built into my couple value statement.
So here are the trips we’re thinking of taking or have already booked:
1 Adventure Trip – we want to go back to Vancouver Island with the babes (traveling with the twins is an adventure) and this time maybe I’ll be able to go surfing in Tofino (which I haven’t done for years!) So traveling with kids and a sport combines two types of adventures.
1 Relaxing Trip – There are a few Web3 events in Lisbon later in the year so I’m thinking of drawing a work trip out and bringing Mike so we can do a relaxing trip in Portugal and then maybe Spain where a girlfriend of mine owns a house.
1 Honeymoon – We’ve got a week booked at a resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic at the end of February so we can escape the winter and get some sun therapy. We’re going back to a resort that I’ve already been to. Mike and I actually haven’t been to a resort on our own so I’m excited.
Other than those planned trips there is one work trip that I’m thinking of taking to Austin, Texas for the Consensus convention.
Leisure
In 2022, I created a self-reliance challenge for myself. I loved learning one new self-reliant skill a month so I’m continuing this challenge into 2023. I’ve put it under my leisure life category because it encompasses a few hobbies as well. I’ll share more in a post about the challenge but here are the skills or things I’m thinking of learning this year or continuing to learn.
Meat Brine Curing & Smoking
Change A Tire
Purchase/Set Up a Generator
Gardening
Composting
Plant Identification
Home Evacuation Plan & Run Through
Water Storage
Fire Starting Skill
Root Veggie Storage
Hunting
Knitting a Hat
Self-Development
In addition, to the self-reliance challenge which is also a form of self-development, I’m also challenging myself to a resilience challenge.
Resilience Definition: The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
And while I believe myself to be a very resilient person, having endured several tough life moments. I also recognize that I struggled with stress management in the last few years. And while I’m giving myself grace, I thought I could challenge myself to one thing a month to build physical and emotional resilience.
Here are some of the things I’m thinking about doing:
cold water plunges (3 x a week)
Wim Hof breathing (daily)
no sugar (for a month)
no TV (for a month)
reduce phone time by 50%
10 pull-ups (daily)
10 push-ups (daily)
do 1 thing a week that scares me
daily prayer
daily time in silence
weekly friendship dates
15 mins daily sun gazing
I’ll of course share more in a separate post and document both challenges on my Instagram.
Career
I definitely have diversified interests when it comes to earning an income.
In 2022, I started a full-time contract role with a US Web3 marketing agency and product studio. I’m really lucky in the role that I have and I’m hoping to continue my web3 knowledge and marketing skills. I’d also like to explore taking on at least 1 client as a fractional CMO in my “spare time” outside of a 9-5 to diversify my income further.
As a side hustle, I’ve loved building my dÅTERRA business for the past 6 years and will continue to build this business. Over the past few years, I’ve had a few business partners and customers churn so I’ve set a goal for myself to rebuild my business to the level that I experienced previously as a Premier and then Silver.
My husband and I also incorporated a business in 2021 but we haven’t gotten it off the ground running yet. We have been looking for the perfect property to make it happen on. We’ll hold off property searching in the winter and resume the search this spring.
As a published author I think I’m ready to publish my next book. An idea that popped into my head this past year was a jointly published book with several authors. I’d like to publish a book all about Autoimmune Thrivers and showcase their stories of diagnosis, healing, and thriving.
Additionally, I’ve always wanted to publish my own planner. I’ve been dreaming up formats and I think I’m ready to bring this project to fruition in 2023.
And last but not least, I’m ready to monetize my writing. So I’m hosting a substack newsletter focused on documenting my resilience and self-reliance challenges.
Couple
I’d like to re-focus on scheduling a weekly date night because it’s important for me to connect with Mike on a consistent basis. I also want to create the space for us to plan our months and weeks in a way where we feel supported and aligned in taking care of our family.
Because I use Asana daily I’ve been experimenting with using it more and more for my personal life. I’ve scheduled several monthly recurring tasks for myself on the 1st of every month. When it comes to Mike and me the tasks include:
Schedule Weekly Date Nights
Schedule Monthly & Weekly Planning Meetings
Friendships
It’s important to me to plan time on a monthly basis to connect with key friendships to kindle connection and mutual support.
When I was building the eBook for my Meta Healing Program I included this image from dÅTERRA’s MetaPWR launch materials. These are 5 things we can do to improve our metabolic health. And while I am doing a great job in the healthy eating, daily movement, and smart supplementation areas of my life I know I need to improve upon stress management and healthy connections. So this is where monthly friendship dates play a role.
In addition to improving my metabolic health, it’s a value of mine to feel enriched by the relationships and people around me. So here’s to more consistent friend dates in 2023. I’ve also incorporated into the resilience challenge, one month where I’ll be booking weekly friend dates. However, over the course of the year, I’ll be prioritizing getting one friendship date on the calendar every month.
I’ve also set a monthly recurring task for myself in Asana to “Schedule Monthly Friendship Date” on the 1st of the month.
Health
I took some time this month to reflect on my “health goals” or the things that I’m working on healing in my health or things I’m looking to optimize. I’m conscious of language and how some verbiage can be triggering to some. I’ve been working with a Naturopath, an Ayurveda Practitioner, and a Nutritionist over the past year. I love understanding different modalities and taking tips and tricks from each to take care of myself holistically.
You’ll hear in the wellness industry to avoid language around “fixing” oneself as it then implies that we see our body as broken. I like to think about it as something that we need to oil before it breaks. My body is not broken but it sure is yelling at me. Things are squeaky and need attention.
Here are 7 things I’m looking to heal / optimize / or whatever language is appropriate and doesn’t trigger a wellness practitioner to DM me š
So many things are interwoven. I received multiple iron transfusions after the birth of the twins in 2020 which led to high liver enzymes which has steamrolled into an iron overload (that I was probably already dealing with pre-pregnancy). After doing multiple tests in 2022 from a DUTCH test to a hair mineral analysis to a full monty blood panel we discovered mineral imbalances, high oxidative stress markers, and a hormone imbalance.
So with smart supplementation, lifestyle changes, and nutrition, I’ll be continuing to support my body in optimizing my health this year. I will share more on this in-depth as I work through the healing.
Fitness
I want to continue to be consistent with at least 4 workouts a week. And potentially upgrade to 5 workouts a week if that feels good for my body. I will continue with weekly yoga classes and daily walks with Mike and the dogs.
I’ve also scheduled a weekly recurring task in Asana to schedule my weekly workouts and book my weekly yoga class on Sunday nights. I already have 4 weekly workouts scheduled in my calendar for 5:30 am 4 days a week but on Sunday I’ll figure out which workout I’m going to do so I don’t have to think about it at 5 am in the morning.
Spiritual / Stress Management
I’ve got a really good stress management toolkit. However, as with most things if I’m not consistent with my tools how I react to external stress takes a toll on me. I rated this category a 6 in 2022 because I struggled to maintain consistency. I prioritized extra sleep in the morning or scrolling Instagram before my morning workouts instead of quiet time for myself. So here are 5 things I’m prioritizing in 2023.
Here are two things I will do on a daily basis:
Morning Meditation
Journaling
And here are two things I will do a few times a week:
Epsom Salts Baths
Infrared Sauna
And here is one thing I’m committed to doing once a week:
Weekly Group Therapy
Nutrition
When it comes to nutrition and food, Mike and I wrote out a shared value statement. We value that at least 90% of our meals are farm-to-table. I love being able to purchase and support local farmers directly. We also value giving our kids treats so they don’t feel restricted in our way of eating. We are really proud of how we nourish our family.
And because of this, I want to work on creating a farm connection event or farm connection community where customers can easily connect with and learn how to support local farmers in a sustainable way for their lifestyles. This might include a map with a clear indication of what products are available locally for purchase, what days farms are open to in-person buying, what farmer’s markets they attend, and when and potentially even a way for consumers to trade volunteer time for produce. Lots to think about here but my wheels are turning on this one.
Home
There is not much more to do to make our house a home. I only have a few items left on the honey-do list. Mike should be happy to read that. The main one I’d really love to have completed this coming year is to have living room built-ins installed.
And I want to finally outsource cleaning our home. For me, having a clean and tidy home is in direct support of my stress management. So I’m going to prioritize that financially this year.
Family
When it comes to our family, we value making memories through seasonal bucket lists. We spend time together eating, learning, playing, adventuring, and in quiet moments together. We grow relationships individually within the family.
So for 2023, we’ll create a winter bucket list to tackle and then a summer one. We’ll also prioritize, at least twice a month, a mommy-son date / daddy-daughter date and then a mommy-daughter date / daddy-son date. This is important to us so that our kids get dedicated time with one parent as our attention is always pulled in different directions constantly when we’re all together.
Financial
Financially we are doing really well so I’d like to focus on at least 6% annual growth in our investments. And then plan for a few projects or purchases that require a sizeable investment like purchasing a generator for the home as a part of the self-reliant challenge. Mike is also working towards his pilot’s license so I want to ensure he has the financial means and support to achieve that.
I have also scheduled a recurring task monthly to review our investments as I could do a much better job at looking at them more frequently.
It’s that time of the year for sharing my 2022 goals and intentions for a new year post! I think I have been sharing goal posts on my blog since 2011! I used to link back to each year’s new year’s goal posts. But who’s really interested in going that far back in my goal setting posts!? I’m sure if you’re really that curious you can use the search bar š
I totally document my annual goals for myself so I can look back on the year and see what progress I’ve made. Glancing at this post every quarter helps me see if I’m on track. I will also decide to throw a goal out because it no longer resonates with me. And in the process, I hope these types of posts inspire you if you’re into annual goal setting.
I’ve had a very specific way of planning that serves me quite well. I’ll share a little bit around the process in case you want to use this method to plan out your year.
Core Desired Feelings – My Intentions for 2022 Goals
I always start my annual 2022 goal planning by thinking about how I want to feel in key areas of my life. I love looking at images and words on Pinterest and these ones jumped out at me this year.
Here’s a little more about the choice behind each word:
Energized – I want to feel energized in my body and in the things I choose to pursue (whether it’s hobbies, friendships or career choices).
Clarity & Brave – I want clarity over how I’m meant to show up in this world and I want to be brave in all of my actions.
Sexy – I want to feel sexy in my body again. I want to feel sexy in my skin.
Shine – I feel like I’ve been hiding over the past few years and I’m ready to stop hiding.
Bliss – I want to feel bliss in the presence I experience with my family.
Life Category Audit
After I’ve thought about how I want to feel in 2022 I take an honest assessment over different categories in my life. I score each life category from 1 – 10. 1 being zero satisfaction in that life category and 10 being so completely satisfied. This will shape the order that I tackle my 2022 goals in the new year. Here’s my audit.
Career – 9
Side Hustles – 7
House – 5
Nutrition – 9
Fitness – 5
Health – 5
Relationships – 7
Stress Management – 5
Personal Development – 8
Reading – 7
Writing – 7
Podcast – 5
This means when I start to look at specific goals for 2022 in my life I will prioritize the lower scored categories first. I find when I prioritize those it makes it much easier to tackle all other goals in my life.
2022 Goals by Life Category
I’ll try to share in this section, why I scored the categories the way I did and what I’m hoping to accomplish for my 2022 goals. Let’s start with the lower ranked categories and what do I need to start doing or optimize immediately to focus on my well-being and happiness.
House Goals – Score: 5
House as a category scored really low for me because I haven’t felt settled since we arrived back in Ottawa in April. I haven’t felt like our house is a home. We still have many boxes we have yet to unpack as we had planned on renovations before truly getting settled.
When we renovated our house in 2017 we only did the kitchen, living room, flooring and doors throughout the house. At the time we didn’t renovate the bathrooms and they desperately need it. When we moved back home to Ottawa and back into our house in May, we had talked about a major bathroom renovation and creating a new bathroom as an ensuite to our master bedroom. We started renovations in 2021 with our upstairs bathroom since you can only renovate one bathroom at a time while living in the house. We got started in June and we are just finishing it up now in December. This renovation took a little too many months for my liking to get it done. So we’ve hired contractors to renovate the current master bedroom closet, create a master bath ensuite, renovate the existing downstairs bathroom and put in a gear closet for us.
This will allow Mike and I to move from the guest bedroom down to our previous bedroom, have a private master bathroom for ourselves and move the babes from their current nursery into the larger room we are currently in. From there I’ll transform my previous office, turned nursery into a decent guest bedroom for when Mike’s parent’s come to visit. Thankfully this goal is being tackled in the first few months of the year.
Fitness / Movement Goals – Score: 5
My fitness has been off and on again this year. I keep setting a goal of working out 5 – 6 days a week and then something keeps happening mentally to me to thwart it so I’m doing what I do best when I start implementing a new habit and going back to baby steps. I have 2 things that will help me build this habit back into my life.
Starting Small – For January my goal is to workout 3 days / week. In February 4 days / week. In March 5 days / week and then build it up to 6 days / week in April.
I’m also asking my husband, Mike to program my workouts for me. If I have a program to follow I have no excuse for a lack of motivation.
Last but not least, I’m craving an in-person yoga practice again. So I’ve found a beautiful studio in Wakefield that I’ll be attending Sunday morning yoga classes at.
Health Goals – Score: 5
I am struggling with my health. In December of 2020, after requesting routine bloodwork, it was discovered that I have high liver enzymes. I have still yet to see a specialist so I’ve taken matters into my own hands as I normally do when conventional medicine fails me and have built a health care team to try and figure it out. I’ve been on a supplement protocol, getting monthly accupuncture and I saw an ayurveda practitioner for support this fall. I’m looking forward to blood test results in the new year and optimizing from there.
Once my liver enzyme issue has been solved, I’ll be talking a look at my hormone health. Something feels off emotionally and I have a gut feeling it’s related to some potential hormone imbalances that were discovered before we conceived. I haven’t asked for hormone related bloodwork in a while so that will be interesteing to take a look at in the future.
And last but not least, is continually optimizing for living with MS. I’ve been having weird symptoms in my neck every time I look down so that’s my bodies way of telling me things are not currently ok. I’ll take stock of all the things I do for myself or can do for myself and see where I’m lacking and need to implement some habits for my well-being.
Stress Management Goals – Score: 5
Mike has become an extreme early riser. He sets his alarm on weekdays for 4:30am. This means I have an 8:30 pm bedtime to ensure I’m getting my 8 hours of sleep. Once his alarm goes off, I roll over, grab my phone and turn on a meditation. This helps me to slowly wake up before heading to the bathroom for tongue scraping and oil pulling before making my morning lemon water.
With a new sauna in our house and a renovated upstairs bathroom, I have no excuse to not spend time every evening in a delicious bedtime routine. I’ll be alternating having a sauna or an Epsom Salt bath every single night š
Last but not least, I have signed up for a weekly women’s therapy group. I have been having some hard thoughts lately and moments of panic attacks or extreme sadness and I know it’s time to get the help that I’ve sought in the past and know I so desperately in need of right now.
Podcast Goals – Score: 5
My podcast isn’t lighting me up anymore. It started feeling like a chore. So it’s time to hang up the microphone for a while.
Relationships Goals – Score: 7
My relationship with my husband is the strongest it has ever been and yet I miss the days sometimes of just the two of us. We are amazing parenting partners and I love him so dearly so we are choosing to focus on our relationship again by implementing a weekly date night. And it doesn’t have to mean going out every week, it could simply be setting up a picnic in the living room after the babes go to bed and having a heart to heart.
I have some of the most beautiful friendships in my life during this season. And my heart soars after quality time with them. So I’m choosing to plan out to ensure I get monthly friendship dates with a few key people!
Reading Goals – Score: 7
I’ve been reading a lot for work lately. And love immersing myself into “reading” again. I say it in quotation marks because audiobooks have been key for me this year. I’ve set a goal for myself next year to read 1 book a month.
Writing Goals – Score: 7
I truly love this blog. I truly love this outlet of mine. I’ve said over the past few years that 1 – 2 blogs a week feels good for me so that shall continue. I rated this category as a 7 because I feel like I have my next book in me ready to be birthed so I’m starting to think if this is the year, I start mapping out the contents.
Career / Side Hustles Goals
I scored a 9 in my career and a 7 in my side hustles. I’m really happy in my career. I’ve landed as a Marketing Director for a sales development training company and we have some big 2022 goals to accomplish and I’m excited to be a part of the team. However, because I started working full-time again in June of 2021 most of my energy and focus has been put into that role and I had little to no energy in the morning or evenings to dedicate to my side hustles. So I scored myself a 7 because I know I can get focused and do better in a few areas.
Side Hustle Goals – Score: 7
I love my dÅTERRA Business. I threw myself into the business during my mat leave but had to take a step back a bit this year due to my health and my energy needs for my full-time role. I’m excited to get refocused and continue to work towards supporting my customers. I have some big goals in terms of actually supporting women (or men) in being able to build a diversified income with this business in 2021.
I lauched Lifestyle Health Audits in my Autoimmune Thriving business last year as well and really enjoyed connecting with individuals who are looking for a health care tour guide. I’m thinking of re-launching my Autoimmune Thriving program next year so I’ll start some market research to see how many people might be interested in joining.
Last but not least, my husband and I incorporated a business earlier this year, we’ve been looking for the right piece of land to start the business but haven’t found the right one. After several offers, and one accepted one that didn’t work out (structural issues in a building on site) we are still searching so that continues to be a priority for us into the new year.
Career Goals – Score: 9
I’d like to set myself up to become a fractional CMO in the future. There are fewer and fewer C level roles at the top of organizations but I’d like to look at what it would look like to offer my marketing skills to several different organizations who couldn’t afford a full-time role in the future but could benefit from part-time senior leadership support.
Personal Development Goals – Score: 8
In 2021, my husband and I focused on becoming more self-reliant. So if you need to throw an easy label on it, we became preppers this year. We’ve always loved our time out in nature but we are creatures of comfort and if the past 2 years have taught me anything it’s that we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When we also look at what’s going on in the world and the amount of natural disaster that people are facing we want to ensure we are setting ourselves up for survival no matter what sort of scenario lies ahead.
To continue to expand my knowledge and skill set I’ve set up a monthly self-reliant challenge for myself to learn 1-2 new skills a month. I’ll share a separate blog post on the topic!
Nutrition Goals – Score: 9
Nutrition is pretty good for me. I do want to focus on a few things in my health so I’ll always continuously work to optimize the food that nourishes me. I want to ensure I’m always filling our bodies with nutrient dense meals so my goal in this category is to simply try at least 1 new nutrient dense recipe a week.
In addition, my dÅTERRA business team always runs an annual 21 day Healthy Habits Program. It starts February 1st so I’ll be following along for myself! And in June we’ll be running out Essential 30 day Cleanse which I’ll also be participating in.
Well there you have it, all my 2022 goals in one place. Does this method of planning resonate with you? Do you have a similar practice? Want to share some of your 2022 goals with me?
There aren’t too many years in my life that fly by but 2020 and 2021 definitely caught me by surprise in terms of how fast they happened. Is that what happens after you have kids?
I love looking back on the past year and in 2020 I started a tradition of celebrating my accomplishments and sharing some lessons instead of just reviewing what goals I was able to check off a list. So here is my 2021 year in review!
Moved our family back across the country from Port Alberni to our home in Ottawa
Learned how to hunt (basically on my own – I have a mentor but we only got together to hunt in person in the Spring)
We went camping in the skoolie with our family at Fitzroy Harbour (this is an accomplishment with twins!) and travelled up to our cottage twice
Celebrated the twin’s first birthday
Renovated the upstairs bathroom
Became preppers (in the sense that we have supplies for certain kinds of emergencies)
Learned much more about standard investing and how to invest in cryptocurrencies
Paid off all our debt
Went hiking with the babes on Vancouver Island and around Ottawa
We said goodbye to my grandmother this summer and I’m so grateful that she got to meet our babes twice. That meant the world to me and I’ll always remember her holding them this year.
Top 5 Lessons from 2021
Flexed my resilient skills (yet again) after being laid off while on maternity leave and found an amazing company to land at after my mat leave was over. They are so supportive and live their corporate values. I’ve learned what red flags to look for now in companies that don’t support mothers and how to ensure a company truly supports work/life harmony.
Learned how to write a business plan for a new business we are in the process of setting up (still looking for the right piece of land)
When tackled with a potential health threat for our son Ryland (a tick bit him in October), I’ve learned about what resources are available regarding Lyme disease in Ottawa, Ontario and feel confident that we proactively treated him to ensure it didn’t take hold in his body.
I’m learning how to heal my body when faced with high liver enzymes consistently over the course of a year.
My nervous system needs deep healing and it can’t be fixed by just morning meditation and Epsom salt baths. Taking the steps I need to continue my healing journey over the past two years.
Top 5 Blog Posts from 2021
I love checking out my Google Analytics to see which posts resonate the most with people. So here are my top 5 read blog posts in 2021.
While Port Alberni wasn’t a long time home for us, we did love our time out there and tried to not let a bad experience with a company leave a bad taste in our mouth for the city.
It feels so good to look back on this past year and celebrate the good, and cherish the lessons despite the craziness that is going on in the world around us.
