2025 Goals & Intentions

Happy New Year.

This is my hands down favourite blog of the year. Drum roll, please. My 2025 goals and intentions! I love writing these down every year so I have them transcribed in one place (for my own reference). And should it bring you motivation, inspiration or maybe even a few good ideas that you might want to try on for size then I hope you enjoy reading!

Before I even BEGIN to think about smart goals for 2025 I start with how I want to feel.

So here are my 2025 core desired feelings:

Here are all the words I wrote down before I culled it down to my four.

Confident, Bold, Magnetic, Ease, Vibrant, Electric, Courageous, Energized, Empowered, Grounded, Inspired, Connected, Calm, Slow to Anger, Non-Reactive, Transformed, Challenged, Wonder, Discovery, Expansive, Delight, Resilient, Safe, Nurtured, Supported, Aligned, Fulfilled, Illuminated, Passionate, Assured, and Fearless

Magnetic: I want to be magnetic to opportunities and people. I want to vibrate at the frequency that attracts the right business opportunities and people into my life.

Challenged: I want to feel challenge in my career. I want to feel challenged in building an entrepreneurial business with my husband and diversifying our income with an online business as well. I want to feel challenged in my workouts and in my personal growth.

Assured: As you can see above, one of the first words that I’ve been attracted to in the past and this year was confident. But I found that I really started embodying confidence at the end of 2024. When I was looking at Confidence synonyms, Assured stood out to me. It’s this level of confidence that comes with an extra level of wisdom and calmness. Guaranteed confidence no matter the situation.

Nurtured: I want to feel nurtured in my routines and how I move through this life. From taking care of my nervous system, to my health, to healing after workouts. I want to nurture myself and remain open to being nurtured by others.

So after I choose my core desired feelings I start with a life category audit from the previous year.

Life Category Audit

Here is how I ranked my life categories based on how 2024 went. 1 = not happy with this area of my life, 10 = I’ve got this area figured out. And this year I avoided picking 7 for any category because I find that it’s a safe pick. When you pick 7 it’s not too low but it’s also not too high. However, if you’re choosing a 7 is it really a 7 or do you need to rank it lower and actually address this area of your life.

Career 8

Finances 8

Health 6

Fitness 6

Nutrition 6

Travel 9

Home 9

Spiritual 9

Couple 9

Family 9

Friendships 4

Leisure 8

So after ranking my life categories, I focus on setting goals first in my lowest-ranked categories:

Friendships

I ranked friendships as a 4 this year because while I was able to focus on some really great friendships this year I am craving deeper connection and conversations.

Here are my friendship smart goals for the year:

Book 1 monthly friendship date (with current friends or for meeting new people)
Coordinate monthly potlucks with like-minded women
Join a like-minded female community

In 2019, I had started a monthly potluck with people who followed the autoimmune paleo protocol (AIP). I really loved getting together with other people who ate similarly to me but the vibe just wasn’t what I was looking for. In November of 2024, my friend Karen had friends over for a brunch and it was just so nice to be around positive, warm women. So more of that this year please!

Last but not least, my friend Lianne has asked if I would join a dinner/networking series for female Ottawa entrepreneurs so I’ve raised my hand to join them.

Health & Fitness

I’ve ranked health & fitness at a 6 for the last two years. While I’ve made significant improvements in 2024. If I am still not in a place I’d like to be. By the end of 2025, I want to feel assured, confident and that I’m nurturing my body. I’ve said that I want to feel happy looking in the mirror but this year I’m using bolder language like “I want a bangin bod”. No more sugar coated vanilla words.

I will continue to challenge myself in my workouts through my personal trainer. The result of continued challenging workouts will be losing weight, gaining energy and feeling excited to look in the mirror again. One of my leisure goals is to compete in a Ballroom dancing competition and those dresses can be tiny. So I would love to look good in one before I step on the competition dance floor. So my fitness goal is linked to a leisure goal and directly tied to having a “bangin’ bod” again.

Here are my Fitness smart goals for 2025:

4 Workouts a week (2 challenging)
Yoga (once a week)
Ballroom dancing lesson (once a week)

When it comes to my health, I’ve been tackling several things over the years from supporting my liver health, ensuring I don’t experience another MS relapse to strengthening my pelvic floor due to a pelvic floor prolapse. From a health perspective, there are three priorities that I have for 2025. Unfortunately my pelvic floor prolapse is not healing based on simple exercises so I am going to pursue surgical intervention in 2025 as it’s getting to a point where it’s affecting the quality of my life. After doing a parasite cleanse in December of 2024 and voiding my body of multiple parasites I’ll be implementing this twice a year moving forward. And then last but not least I’ll continue focusing on keeping inflammation low in my body to avoid any MS relapses.

So here are my Health smart goals for 2025:

Finish the Sexy Autoimmune Academy (to continue educating myself on overall care for myself)
Do a Parasite Cleanse (2x a year)
Do daily pelvic floor strengthening & relaxation prior to surgery

I also want to work on my sleep health and period health so there are a few things I’ll be implementing.

Going to bed by 9 – 9:30 pm
Reading from 8:30 – 9:00 pm each night
Eating raw carrot salads and increasing my magnesium in the back half of my cycle.

Nutrition

I wanted to track my protein intake last year and that simply didn’t get done so I’m keeping this as a goal in 2025.

I’m going to start with a goal of 132g of protein a day.

Bring on the MyFitness Pal tracking. I’ve also set a reminder for myself in my Reminders app to input my tracking every night around dinner time so that it gets done.

Last but not least, I’d like to start cooking more. Since my twin pregnancy, my husband Mike took over all our dinner cooking but I miss cooking with him, which we did during my pregnancy. So the goal would be to cook with him at least once a week and continue to introduce at least 1 new recipe into the meal plan weekly!

Career

I scored Career as an 8 this year as my full-time job is going extremely well but I’m being pulled to become an entrepreneur.

I initially wanted to start an online business and revive my Autoimmune Thriving brand but then we went and bought 160 acres in the country in December of 2024. We have held a vision for an Airbnb rental business since 2021 and we’ve just been waiting for the right property. So keep an eye out as we’ll be bringing Wild Escapes to life over the course of 2025.

I am also going to relaunch my 2026 Essential Planner next fall.

While I have hopes to revive my Autoimmune Thriving brand to support other autoimmune warriors, I’ll have to gauge if I truly have the capacity. My priorities are my full-time job, Wild Escapes and The Essential Planner.

And while I might not have time for this endeavour I have a few children’s books in me that I’d love to create and birth into the world!

Finances

While we are moving to a new property in the country we are still retaining our current house in the suburbs. We have found renters for our current house so we’ll be carrying a mortgage on both properties. With that and launching a new business our finances will need to be managed a bit differently this year. We are also saving for building a new house in the future so we’ll be also focusing on squirreling away money for our dream build.

So my financial goals for 2025 are:

Launch Wild Escapes with minimal debt
Grow investments 6% for the year
Follow a monthly budget that includes savings for a dream build

Leisure

Last year for leisure I said I would choose a monthly self-reliance or resilience challenge depending on how I felt. But because it didn’t get planned out it didn’t happen. I liked challenging myself two years ago by learning how to become more self-reliant and more resilient so I’m planning these out this year. Some I’ve done before and others will be new to me.

Self-Reliance Challenges

Knitting (January)
Install Generator (February)
Change A Tire (March)
Learn Some Herbal Remedies (April)
Gardening (May)
Composting (June)
Split Firewood (July)
Plant Identification (August)
Foraging / Mushroom Hunting (September)
Root Veggies Storage / Seed Saving (October)
Hunting (November)
Butchering / Animal Field Dressing (December)

Resilience Challenges

Weekend Digital Detoxes (January)
No Processed Sugar (February)
10 Push Ups Daily (March)
Cold Water Plunges (April)
10 Pull Ups Daily (May)
Morning Sun Gazing (June)
Reduce Phone Time (July)
No TV (August)
Daily Morning Stretching (September)
Wim Hof Breathing (October)
10,000 Daily Steps (November)
Daily Morning Prayer & Silence (December)

Last but not least, I mentioned in my health and fitness section that I want to try my hand at a ballroom dance competition this year. There is one in May and one in August so we’ll see if I can get ready for the one in May!

Travel

I love setting goals around travelling three times a year. With us moving into a new home and starting a new business we might need to put this goal on the back burner in the short term.

Home

We move in January to a new home in the country. It’s not our dream home and eventually we’ll be building a new home on the land but in the meantime, we’ll work on renovating the new house so it’s an easy sell once we’ve built the dream home.

Our renovation list includes (in no particular order):

New Back Deck & Sunroom
Gym in the Garage
New Kitchen Countertops (Possibly New Kitchen Cabinets)
New Primary Bathroom Shower
New Guest Bedroom Flooring
New Laundry Room Flooring

Our future dream home plan will be to build a Barndominium so we’ll have fun planning out the design as we up level the current home.

Spiritual

My spritual ranking went from a 6 to a 9 this year as I truly focused on this area of my life. I have the most delicious morning routine now and so I’ll continue my smart goals as they feel so good in my life.

My spiritual smart goals are:

Daily morning meditation
Daily journaling
Daily devotional & Bible reading

Couple

Last year I ranked couple as a 9, if you had asked me halfway through the year how I’d rank this category I would have ranked it as a 1 as we went through some really tough times this year. But at the end of the year, the ranking is back up to a 9. When this area of our life is suffering all other areas suffer so we immediately address issues as they come up and work through them as a couple. I’m proud of how hard we work on our marriage and how much fun we’ve been able to bring back into our relationship. We’ve challenged each other to grow and I’m so proud of us and the family unit we are nurturing together as partners in love and life.

Since our travel plans need to be put on hold for the short term with the move and new business I would like to take at least 1 weekend trip away together. Thankfully we love to explore new and unique Airbnbs so I can use it as research for the new business (and expense).

Family

And when it comes to our family unit we’ve grown so much together and life is just so good. Last year I had set the following intentions that we’ll continue with because they just work for us.

We spend time every morning as a family connecting
We have dinner together every night and go for a walk as a family and with our dogs after dinner (especially in the summer)
We have a winter & summer bucket list
We spend long weekends up at the family cottage
We go on monthly Mommy/Daughter & Daddy/Son and then Mommy/Son & Daddy/Daughter dates.

And this year we are choosing to place our kids in the Acton Academy school model and found a really great franchise in Ottawa for the kids to try. While we had started homeschooling the kids in 2024 we also recognized that if we are going to build a business together that we’ll need the space to dedicate to that and the kids deserve an opportunity to thrive. While we’ll never put our kids in the public school system we found a unique private school model that we resonate with!

Let’s do this 2025!

2024 Year In Review

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Every year before writing down my goals for the year, I decide how I want to feel. The important part of this exercise is deciding how I want to feel as I achieve the goals I’ve set out for myself. Before we get into my 2024 year in review, here were the core desired feelings that I wanted to feel this year.

Here’s a little more about the choice behind each word:

Electric – I wanted to feel jolts of excitement to course through me as I moved through life this year. In previous years I had used words like lit up before but Electric just landed differently for me and as I write this blog in the back half of December I have truly felt like life is coursing through my veins with an electric feeling. I keep saying that gratitude is oozing out of me so for me, I definitely feel electric with excitement for life lately!
Radiant – I wanted to feel more connected to my husband and to my family. I wanted to feel more present in everything we do from weekly & monthly planning to daily walks and family time. We have put so much work into saving our marriage this year that I can truly say I feel radiant in my relationship with Mike and thus our family is thriving.
Expansive – I wanted to feel energized in my body and in the things I choose to pursue from career to hobbies to friendships and more. I have taken this year to do some really deep mindset work and I no longer feel like the person who started the year. So my mindset has truly expanded this year so I can hold more.
Vibrant – I wanted to feel more enriched in relationships from friends to simply people we are surrounded by. I would say I applied this word more to how I feel in my body and my health and postpartum weightloss. With consistent workouts, yoga and ballroom dancing I feel more vibrant in my body everyday.

2024 Goals In Review

So as I do every year, I spend time setting goals by life categories. I start by doing a life audit and ranking each category and then I set goals starting with the lowest ranking categories in my life. In 2024 here was how everything was ranked:

Health, Fitness, Spiritual and Friendships = 6

Nutrition & Leisure = 7

Home & Travel = 8

Career, Finances, Couple & Family = 9

Based on this audit, I set goals in Health & Fitness first, then Spiritual and Friendships. Because of my Health & Fitness goals, more goals seemed to fall into place more easily.

Health & Fitness

In 2024, I wanted to feel happy looking in the mirror. And for me that meant, I wanted to feel confident looking at my body in the mirror. Which translated into continued postpartum weight shedding.

At the beginning of the year, I continued to program my own workouts. I bought PDF workouts from a friend but I didn’t feel challenged enough in my workouts and I didn’t always do 3 – 4 workouts a week. Halfway through the year I ended up hiring a personal trainer to push me and keep me accountable. I’ve been fairly successful in staying consistent with my workouts due to the accountability and programming.

My Health smart goals were:

1. Finish the Sexy Autoimmune Academy

2. Start the next healing protocol with my Autoimmune Academy practitioner.

3. Measure minerals mid-year to see where my levels are at and plan accordingly.

I still haven’t finished working through the academy but I did follow up with my practitioner and completed 2 parasite cleanses with them at the beginning of the year. I actually ended up doing a third parasite cleanse with different supplements in December and was wowed at the results. The amount of parasites that I excreted was insane! Another intention I had for the year was to prioritize my health so I didn’t experience any MS relapses and I’m proud to say I was symptom free again this year!

I didn’t end up measuring my minerals mid-year so doing a blood panel this year will be important to see where I’m at.

My Fitness smart goals were:

Do 4 Workouts A Week (2 Challenging)
Meet Myself On My Yoga Mat Once A Week
Try Running (Pelvic Floor Allowing) In The Spring (Run A 5K)
Sub Goal: Rehab My Pelvic Floor

I would say I managed to do 4 workouts a week 80% of the time since hiring a trainer. I consistently went to yoga once a week on Tuesday nights. I attempted running a few times in the Spring and Summer but unfortunately my pelvic floor is so bad that I wasn’t able to stay consistent with this.

I worked with a friend in January to start healing my pelvic floor. I’ve been doing exercises, relaxation and strengthening breathing and contraction exercises but unfortunately I think my pelvic floor was quite injured in the forcep birth delivery of the twins and I’m ok with exploring the possibility of surgery this coming year to heal.

As part of my pelvic floor work I was challenge by my friend to do something to help me get back into my body. So I decided to try pole dancing this winter. The following month I tried ballroom dancing and ballroom dancing stuck for the rest of the year. I’ve learned two kinds of dances (cha cha & east coast swing) and showcased them in two of the Studios Dance Showcases this year. I’m excited to keep going and even set a goal in this area of my life next year.

Spiritual

I ranked my spiritual life category as a 6 as well because I felt like I was having a fair weather friend relationship with myself and with God. I really wanted to stay consistent with my spiritual morning routine.

My spiritual smart goals were:

Be consistent with daily morning meditation
Be consistent with daily journaling and write at least 1 page a day
Be consistent with reading my Bible every morning

I’m so proud of where I taken this life category this year.

My delicious morning routine looks like:
– Wake up and make warm lemon water
– Make decaf coffee and head down to my meditation corner
– Do at least a 10 minute meditation
– Spend 15 mins in quiet with God and my committee
– Journal
– Read my Daily Devotional
– Read my Bible

I would say I’ve been able to be consistent at least 90% of the year so I’m really proud of how I feel in my relationship with God and by giving myself quiet time every morning. I’m just a much better person when I spend my mornings in quiet before the world pulls me in different directions.

Friendships

I ranked friendships as a 6 as well because my friendships have completely changed since getting pregnant with our twins and living through the plandemic (that’s not a typo). At the beginning of the year I craved deep connections with other women and wanted to prioritize the current friendships in my life and try and build new ones.

Here were my friendship smart goals:

Book 1 monthly friendship date (with current friends or for meeting new people)
Book 1 friend trip with my friend Aubrie
Book 1 trip with my friend Shannon to the Adirondacks (Shannon and I travelled to the Adirondacks back in 2019 so I’m excited to book a fall trip with her this coming year.

I was really consistent with friendship dates and prioritized current friendships in my life. I had the best dates from coffee dates, to dinners out, to a knife skills class and Aubrie and I ended the year with a sausage making class.

I wasn’t able to book a friend trip with my friend Aubrie or Shannon this year due to competing life priorities.

Nutrition

I’m really proud of how I nourish myself and our family. We mainly eat AIP for my health. The majority of our food is farm-to-table. We order our beef from Arc Acres and get the majority of our produce from Ottawa Farm Fresh or Lytle’s Organic Vegetables.

With my fitness goals this year, I wanted to be in a slight caloric deficit and I wanted to ensure I was eating the appropriate amount of protein so I had plans to track my protein intake.

And just for fun, I wanted to learn how to bake a new recipe each month with the twins.

I’m afraid to report that I didn’t end up tracking my protein at all and baking fell by the wayside. The only thing I was able to do consistently was make Apple or Strawberry / Rhubarb Pies!

Leisure

For 2024, I had wanted to create a long list of things for a resilience and a self-reliant challenge and then each month, I would pick from the list a challenge for myself based on how life is evolving.

I completely gave this goal up as life had just too much on my plate and I didn’t have the capacity to add this in. I still think it’s a great goal to have but I didn’t want to jam pack my months with too much stuff.

I also wanted to get more successful at gardening and try my hand and hunting again in the fall. Our garden was slightly successful again this year. I was able to grow a few zucchinis, cucumbers, a ton of green onions, a few cabbages, and snap peas. My unsuccessful crops were carrots, beets and brussel sprouts.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get out hunting this year as my full-time work flew our entire agency out to Thailand this year right in the middle of hunting season.

Home

When it came to our home I had requested a more usable home gym. Mike ended up installing a foldable bench and squat rack that I used all year.

We had also been continuously searching for a new place to live since we moved back to Ontario in 2021. And we finally found our dream property half-way through the year. We ended up putting in an offer on house with 160 acres in August while we were travelling with our family and after getting an accepted offer we tried to sell or rent our house. It took us a while but mid-December we finally got an offer to rent our house and so we’re moving to our dream property at the end of January!

Travel

I planned 3 trips this year and ended up taking an additional 3 business trips.

1. Adventure Trip – We took the twins to Banff

2. Honeymoon Trip – Mike and I took our annual honeymoon to Mexico

3. Relaxing Trip – I didn’t end up taking a friend trip this year (which was going to be my relaxing trip) but I did end up traveling three times on business

4. Business Trips:

Denver for ETHDenver with my full-time work
Salt Lake City for dōTERRA’s annual convention in September
Bangkok, Thailand for Devcon with my full-time work

Career

In 2024, I wanted to continue to thrive in my full-time role as a marketing director at a web3 marketing agency. I wanted to offer fractional marketing services to clients and I was hoping to rebuild my dōTERRA business back up to Premier.

I’m still thriving in my web3 marketing agency and was promoted half-way through the year to a Sr. Marketing Director role. I didn’t take on any fractional clients due to bandwidth and did not put any extra effort into my dōTERRA business. I was able to relaunch my Essential Planner with a 2025 version this fall!

Now that we’ve purchased 160 acres in the country we’ll be launching an Airbnb Business in 2025 but more in my 2025 goals blog about that!

Financial

In 2024, I had wanted to increase my income from $200,000 to $300,000. This would’ve been a safe goal but I had really wanted to generate at least $600,000 in revenue in 2024 with multiple income streams.

While I wasn’t able to increase my revenue to the $600,000 mark I was able to increase it to my safe goal of $300K.

From an investment perspective, every year I want to grow our investments by 6%. This year I was only able to see a 4% growth at the time of writing this blog.

Couple

I’m really proud of how my husband and I connected again this year. We continued with weekly date nights. I had wanted to continue with working together from a coffee shop after dropping the kid off at forest school but this year they were in a full day forest school so it didn’t make sense to work from a coffee shop all day.

We continued our annual tradition of a honeymoon and travelled to Mexico this year for a week away. I was also able to bring Mike with me to Thailand.

We celebrate our anniversary in August. We were supposed to go camping with our family this year but Mike’s best friend wanted to host his bachelor party that weekend. So while Mike was away for the weekend he came home the Saturday night of our actual anniversary and took me out for dinner at Gezelig in Westboro.

We’ve continued to work at the strength of our relationship. Through really hard conversations we’ve continued to work on issues and come out stronger. Our relationship is in such a good place at the end of the year and I’m so grateful for the growth we’ve experienced together.

Family

At the beginning of the year I envisioned the following things for us:

We spend time every morning as a family connecting.
We have dinner together every night and go for a walk as a family and with our dogs after dinner.
We go on one annual trip a year.
We have a winter & summer bucket lists.
We spend long weekends up at the family cottage.
We go on monthly Mommy/Daughter & Daddy/Son and then Mommy/Son & Daddy/Daughter dates.
We are homeschooling the kids in addition to them attending 1 – 2 forest schools.

I’m happy to say that all of these things and more happened for our family.

I love the time we spend together in the morning and the evenings. Our summer was filled with time outside and lots of family walks after dinner. We travelled to Banff with the twins this summer and showed them the mountains. We headed up to our cottage for 4 long weekends this year. We prioritized activities for our family and the twins attended a Tuesday and Friday full-day Forest School! We attempted homeschooling, although it wasn’t the best for us we had fun teaching the kids a few things before they start school in January.

Overall, I love how we prioritize our family and growing our bonds and doing things together. I can’t wait to continue to make new memories next year.

2024 Goals & Intentions

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Happy New Year.

Let’s get into the long-awaited 2024 goals and intentions post. Long awaited for who? I’m pretty sure I write these posts to ensure I’m tracking my own goals. I’m not even sure anyone reads these anymore but truth be told… I love having a place to keep track of my goals and if it inspires someone else’s goals in the process it’s a bonus!

Anyway, without further ado, before I get into the nitty gritty of my goal-setting ways. How do I want to feel in 2024?

Here are my 2024 core desired feelings:

Here are all the words I wrote down before cull it down to these above four.

Electric, Shine, Flow, Turned On, Vibrant, Radiant, Bold, Expansive, Boundless, Authentic and Truth. And then I landed on…

Electric: I want jolts of excitement to course through me as I move through life this year. I’ve used the words lit up before but Electric just lands differently in my brain this year.

Expansive: I challenged myself last year with a few difficult goals like publishing my second book and a weekly planner. But I feel like I’m capable of so much more. I want to expand. I just don’t know what that looks like yet.

Radiant: I want to feel radiant in my relationships. I want to spend time with the people I love and just glow.

Vibrant: This one comes down to my health. Last year I wanted to feel energized. I got that now I want to go beyond energized to truly feeling vibrant again in my body and in my skin.

So after I choose my core desired feelings I start with a life category audit.

Life Category Audit

Here is how I ranked my life categories based on how 2023 went. 1 = not happy with this area of my life, 10 = I’ve got this area figured out.

Career 9

Finances 9

Health 6

Fitness 6

Nutrition 7

Travel 8

Home 8

Spiritual 6

Couple 9

Family 9

Friendships 6

Leisure 7

So after ranking my life categories, I focus on setting goals first in my lowest-ranked categories:

Health & Fitness

Since health & fitness were both ranked as a 6 last year and haven’t been ranked well for the past few years I know I need to focus on these first. Moving into 2024, I want to feel happy looking in the mirror. And for me that means, I want to feel confident looking at my body in the mirror. Which translates further into continued weight shedding postpartum.

To move towards these feelings I know that I need to challenge myself in my workouts. The result of more challenging workouts will be losing weight and gaining energy. And thus I will feel more energized every day to be able to add an element of play into my day with my twins.

So here are my fitness smart goals:

1. Do 4 Workouts A Week (2 Challenging)

2. Meet Myself On My Yoga Mat Once A Week

3. Try Running (Pelvic Floor Allowing) In The Spring (Run A 5K)

Sub Goal: Rehab My Pelvic Floor

I’ve had a pelvic floor prolapse since giving birth to the twins and it is very restricting in what my body can do comfortably. So now that my liver health is in a better place and I’m not experiencing a MS relapse I can re-focus on my pelvic floor rehabilitation.

From a health perspective, I want to continue to tackle three things:

Keep Liver Enzymes Low
Rebalance Minerals
No MS Relapses

I shared at the beginning of 2022 that I had been struggling with my liver health since the end of 2020. And while I was able to lower my liver enzymes with the help of the TUDCA supplement I wasn’t given the proper protocol to use this supplement and ended up very suicidal over the winter of 2021/2022 (but that’s another story for another blog). After working with a few different practitioners I was supporting my liver health with different supplements and was able to keep my liver enzymes low. But the minute I’d go off of the supplements they’d go back up. I was seeing a hepatologist who wanted to rule out different liver autoimmune diseases so after more bloodwork and a liver biopsy in 2023 we were able to rule out anything serious.

After several poor appointments with local Ottawa Naturopaths, I decided to enrol in the Sexy Autoimmune Academy with Melissa Ramos in June 2023. I’ve been working through her program, working with one of her practitioners to implement different protocols and I’m starting to see great results as shared in my 2023 review blog. So I’m continuing to plod along with her course and the healing work.

So here are my Health smart goals:

1. Finish the Sexy Autoimmune Academy

2. Start the next healing protocol with my Autoimmune Academy practitioner.

3. Measure minerals mid-year to see where my levels are at and plan accordingly.

By doing all these things, focusing on my self-care and keeping my stress low I know I’ll be able to achieve no MS relapses in 2024.

Friendships

I ranked friendships as a 6 as well because my friendships have completely changed since getting pregnant with our twins and living through the plandemic (that’s not a typo). I am craving deep connections with women and want to prioritize the friendships in my life and build new ones.

Here are my friendship smart goals:

Book 1 monthly friendship date (with current friends or for meeting new people)
Book 1 friend trip with my friend Aubrie (we are toying with the idea of going somewhere warm or at least away for a weekend)
Book 1 trip with my friend Shannon to the Adirondacks (Shannon and I travelled to the Adirondacks back in 2019 so I’m excited to book a fall trip with her this coming year.

Spiritual

I ranked my spiritual life category as a 6 as well because I feel like I’m having an on and off again relationship with both myself and with God. Some mornings I embrace my quiet, contemplative time and then other days I’m curled up on the couch watching reality TV just purely checked out. I know for a fact the days I start with reality TV I am not my best self. So here’s to drop kicking that habit out of my life.

My spiritual smart goals:

Be consistent with daily morning meditation
Be consistent with daily journaling and write at least 1 page a day
Be consistent with reading my Bible every morning

Leisure

Last year for leisure I created a resilience challenge and another self-reliant challenge for myself. As I shared in my 2023 review post these just didn’t go as well as planned. With a combination of being too ambitious and health issues, this fell by the wayside. For 2024, I’m just going to create a long list and then each month, I’ll pick from the list a challenge for myself based on how life is evolving. I’ll need to earmark them for certain months weather depending but I’ll give myself grace to choose each month based on where life is.

Self-Reliance Challenges

Gardening
Composting
Plant Identification
Root Veggie Storage
Hunting
Knitting
Change A Tire
Generator
Herbal Remedies
Butchering / Animal Field Dressing
Foraging / Mushroom Hunting
Seed Saving
Split Firewood

Resilience Challenges

Cold Water Plunges
Morning Sun Gazing
Wim Hof Breathing
Reduce Phone Time
No TV
Weekend Digital Detoxes
No Processed Sugar
Something That Scares Me
Daily Prayer
Daily Silence
10 Push Ups Daily
10 Pull Ups Daily
Weekly Coffee Dates

Nutrition

With my fitness goals next year, I need to be in a slight caloric deficit and I want to ensure I’m eating the appropriate amount of protein so I am going to be tracking my food for the month of January just so I can see how consistent I can be with my protein intake.

And just for fun, I’m going to throw learning to bake a new recipe each month just because our twins love baking and I want them to have memories of us baking together.

Travel

I’ve enjoyed planning for at least 3 trips a year that include:

1. Adventure Trip – We want to take the twins to Banff this year to show them the mountains we love. Think they can handle hiking up Ha Ling?

2. Honeymoon Trip – Mike and I want to take our annual honeymoon to Mexico this year.

3. Relaxing Trip – I want to prioritize travelling with girlfriends this year and take a relaxing trip together as mentioned in my friendship goal.

4. I also have the potential to take 3 business trips:

Nashville for dōTERRA’s Leadership Retreat
Poland for a client event
Salt Lake City for dōTERRA’s annual convention in September

I’m excited to also plan our first Algonquin Park canoe trip with the twins. Hopefully at the end of summer when the weather is a bit cooler and the bugs aren’t as bad 🙂

Home

We renovated our home in the winter of 2022 and it’s everything I could ask for. I think the only thing I wish we had in this current home was a larger home gym. Right now we’ve put a gym in a small sunroom at the back of our house. We are working on making it more usable and installing a foldable bench and squat rack that I can use. That’ll be nice to get done in early January.

But when it comes to dreaming big this is the long-term vision:

We’ve been looking at property for a new business ever since we moved back in 2021. More recently we’ve started looking at several options. The first option would be a property where we can just run the business or a property where we would move and also run the business off of it. In the last few months, we’ve also started talking to my parents about what it might look like to move onto a family compound. So we’ve been looking for a house with an inlaw suite or enough land to build a bungalow for them on it. That way my parents still have their own space but we’re uber close so our kids get to grow up spending loads of time with them.

I’m not putting any pressure on this being a goal for 2024 unless something shows up that we can’t pass up.

And last but not least, as we move into setting our house up for homeschooling the twins I’d like to set up a little nook in our living room that is a dedicated space for learning.

Family

Speaking of family, here are some things I envision for the year.

We spend time every morning as a family connecting.

We have dinner together every night and go for a walk as a family and with our dogs after dinner.

We go on one annual trip a year.

We have a winter & summer bucket lists.

We spend long weekends up at the family cottage.

We go on monthly Mommy/Daughter & Daddy/Son and then Mommy/Son & Daddy/Daughter dates.

We are homeschooling the kids in addition to them attending 1 – 2 forest schools.

Couple

I’m proud of how my husband and I have connected as a couple this year. I adore doing weekly date nights with him. We’ve also started implementing working at a coffee shop together every Friday after we drop the kids off at forest school and then pick them up mid-day. So I’d like to continue that into the new year.

We’ll continue to travel once a year together for a “honeymoon” and go away at least once a year for a weekend away. Our anniversary is actually on a weekend this year so maybe we’ll pair a weekend away with celebrating our anniversary.

One more thing I’d like to look into but I’m just not sure of who’s putting this on and going away for a couple’s retreat where we connect, spend time together, play together and learn together. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Career

I scored a 9 in my career because I’m finally in a beautiful place where I’m happy, fulfilled and challenge.

I love my job as a Marketing Director for a web3 marketing agency. I’ve enjoyed offering a few fractional marketing services here and there and hope to expand that roster this year.

I sell essential oils. I’d like to grow my business back to a solid Elite status from January – May and then rebuild my business to Premier by November of 2024.
I grow our investment income.

I will launch a 2025 weekly planner again next year.

I’m spending time organizing and executing to bring Mike’s Wolves Not Sheep business into a good place.

Finances

I think it’s appropriate to share my career value statement here as it’s my only push goal that makes me feel uncomfortable.

When I look back on my last two years I’ve been able to double my income. In 2022, I earned over $100,000 and in 2023, I was able to double that to $200,000. So the wise me would say I should just aim for the $300,000 mark. But I want to push myself. So my push goal is to generate $600,000 in revenue in 2024 with my multiple income streams.

From an investment perspective I’ll continue to challenge myself to earn 6% growth on my investments. Now to reverse engineer where the $600,000 will come from.

Bring on 2024.

2023 Year In Review

12 / 29 / 2312 / 23 / 23

Every year before writing down my goals for the year, I decide how I want to feel. The important part of this exercise is deciding how I want to feel as I achieve the goals I’ve set out for myself. Before we get into my 2023 year in review, here were the core desired feelings that I wanted to feel this year.

Here’s a little more about the choice behind each word:

Wonder – I wanted to feel wonder whenever I travelled this year and I wanted to feel wonder in my hobbies and how I approached self-development.
Connected – I wanted to feel more connected to my husband and to my family. I wanted to feel more present in everything we do from weekly & monthly planning to daily walks and family time.
Energized – I wanted to feel energized in my body and in the things I choose to pursue from career to hobbies to friendships and more.
Enriched – I wanted to feel more enriched in relationships from friends to simply people we are surrounded by.

I can definitely say I’ve felt Wonder in a few of my trips this year (especially our trip to Vancouver Island this summer), my goal of being more connected with my husband and kids was accomplished, I’ve felt a tad more energized in my body and I’m slowly starting to feel enriched by those around us.

2023 Goals In Review

Travel & Leisure / Self-Development = 5

Career, Health, Fitness, Spiritual/Stress Management, Couple & Friendships = 6

Nutrition = 8

Financial, Home, Family = 9

Based on this audit, I set goals in Travel & Leisure first and then all of the life categories that I ranked as a 6. 2022 was really a tough year for me so I had some high hopes in turning 2023 around. And I’m really happy to say I did. I’m sitting here at the end of the year feeling blissful and very blessed.

Travel

I had set a goal to take 3 trips for the year. 1 adventure trip to Vancouver Island with our family, 1 relaxing trip to Portugal and Spain and then 1 honeymoon with my husband, Mike to the Dominican Republic.

I didn’t end up going to Portugal and Spain but I did end up traveling 4 times in 2023!

Mike and I went on an annual honeymoon to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for a relaxing week away. I travelled to Austin, Texas in April to a web3 convention called Consensus with one of my clients. We travelled to Vancouver Island as a family in August. And I returned to Salt Lake City for dōTERRA’s annual convention in September!

Leisure

In 2022, I created a self-reliance challenge for myself. I loved learning a new skill each month so I decided to continue it in 2023.

I cannot say I was successful this year. However, I did continue to do many of the things that I learned last year. I canned and fermented food again this year, I continued gluten-free sourdough bread baking, I read a book on homeschooling to prepare for the future and I continued to hunt and knit. So here was the challenge list I created for myself this year.

Let’s see how I did…

January: I learned how to brine meat but no curing or smoking (50%)

February: Change A Tire – Nope

March: Home Evacuation Plan & Trial ✅

April: Generator – Nope

May: Gardening ✅

June: Composting – Nope

July: Plant Identification. I bought Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide so I can start learning more but haven’t opened it up to use it yet. (50%)

August: Fire Starting – Nope

September: Water Storage ✅

October: Root Veggie Storage – Nope

November: Hunting ✅, However, I am still not successful, yet!

December: Knitting a Hat, I’ve decided to do mittens instead and will start over the Christmas holidays.

Ok, so this year wasn’t that successful. I struggled with health and unfortunately, this challenge got put on the back burner each month.

Self-Development

In addition to my self-reliance challenge, I decided to make my life more complicated and do a monthly resilience challenge on top of everything. I was actually fairly successful in tackling these challenges and only had to put a few on the back burner.

Here is what I wanted to tackle:

January – cold water plunges (3 x a week) ✅
February – Wim Hof breathing (daily) ✅
March – 10 pull-ups (daily)
April – 15 mins of daily sun gazing ✅
May – weekly friendship dates ✅
June – do 1 thing a week that scares me
July – reduce phone time by 50% ✅
August – no TV (for a month) ✅
September – no sugar (for a month)
October – daily prayer ✅
November – daily time in silence ✅
December – 10 push-ups (daily)

While I was much more successful in this challenge there were a few things I just didn’t schedule and get done.

My husband had a good suggestion for me for next year, he said to make a list for both and then at the start of the month I see what I have going on, and how I feel health-wise and then choose the challenges to tackle each month. So I’ll try that in 2024 because I believe both challenges to be valuable.

Career

I continue to thrive in my full-time role with a web3 marketing agency. And I took on one fractional marketing client.

I had wanted to rebuild my dōTERRA to Premier but struggled to get above Elite this year. I completed a really fun challenge in Q4 with accountability partners called 75 Strong and it allowed me to reconnect with customers and new leads. I think I’ll start it all over again in January.

We are still looking for property for our new business idea so that business is still dormant.

However, my biggest accomplishments of 2023 were becoming a published author again this year with Resilience Redefined and I published my own 2024 weekly planner called The Essential Planner.

I had really wanted to monetize my writing over on Substack. I was hoping to write weekly about my self-reliance and resilience challenges. However, because I had to keep putting my challenges on the back burner I didn’t end up writing enough over there. So I’ve decided to close that platform for now and let it go.

Health

I really struggled with my health this year. After multiple tests I discovered I had several imbalances.

Iron Overload
Rebalance Minerals
Lower Oxidative Stress
Keep Liver Enzymes Low
Rebalance Hormones
Heal Facial Acne

After trying to find multiple Naturopaths who could help me I came up short. I even ended up reporting the last one I met with to the College of Ontario Naturopaths after I did a full intake session and was then asked to pay for another session to receive a protocol. I’m fed up with the profession and how exhausting it is to get results or any type of answers.

I decided to enrol in Melissa Ramos’ Sexy Autoimmune Academy which is self-led and provides me access to a health practitioner. Even just from working through the majority of the videos I’ve learned a ton about the Hierarchy of Healing. I’m shocked I didn’t know the process of opening the drainage pathways before doing any type of healing. I’ve had great results in healing my facial acne. I only get 1 or 2 pimples around my period now and they have moved from my face to my neck so I’m taking that as a huge win. I’ve been able to keep my liver enzymes low. I was able to confirm that I don’t have a known liver disease or an autoimmune disease associated with the liver so that was a huge relief to discover that this year.

As I continue to rebalance my minerals and lower my oxidative stress I’ve noticed an increase in energy, I’m slowly able to shed weight that I held onto post pregnancy and the Autoimmune Academy practitioner reviewed my labs and helped me to identify that I don’t actually have an iron overload issue which a Nutritionist had falsely diagnosed me with.

Fitness

I’ve been fairly consistent with my workouts this year. Thanks to Danielle Pascente‘s Strong in Spring and Strong in Fall I’ve been able to maintain 4 workouts a week. I’m attending 1 weekly yoga class and going for daily walks, sometimes twice a day with Mike and the dogs in the morning and then with our whole family after dinner.

I feel more energized because of my routine and feel lighter in my body.

Nutrition

I shared our food value statement in my goals post at the beginning of the year and I’m so proud of how we followed it this year.

We get milk directly from a farm.

After ordering a 1/4 of a cow in 2021 we finally finished it this year. We’ve been supplementing our truLOCAL orders with beef samplers from Arc Acres and then grabbed a 1/4 of a cow from her farm this November.

I really wanted to create a local farm connection event and it was on my roadmap to execute this year but after looking at all my goals I knew this was going to be too much for me to tackle. I’ll have to sit with it a bit longer to see if it’s something I want to bring back into my goal list in 2024.

Spiritual/Stress Management

My goal was to incorporate morning meditation and journaling into my everyday. I shifted my morning routine about halfway through the year. Instead, of getting up at 5 am and trying to jam-pack making my morning with making lemon water, then coffee or cacao then meditation and journaling before a workout at 5:30 am I’ve been heading to bed around 8:30 pm or 9:00 pm and getting up at 4:30 am so I have a full hour of quiet time before starting my workout around 5:30 am.

I’ve also scheduled Epsom Salt Baths and Infrared Saunas into my evening calendar so I do these at least 2 x a week.

I had originally committed to weekly group therapy but my group therapy disbanded around February and I didn’t look for a new one to join. I’ve been doing well mentally so it wasn’t something I thought about re-prioritizing.

Friendships

I made a goal this year to plan time monthly to connect with friends. So my Reminder app cues me monthly to book a friendship date.

I would message a friend at the beginning of the month and book a dinner out or a coffee date.

In addition, we’ve developed a great friendship with one of my husband’s close friends and his girlfriend and have loved spending time with them a few times during our regularly scheduled date nights. One of our favourite things to do is to head out to their place in the country for a campfire just ourselves or with our kids. We love that they love spending time with both us and our whole family. That’s so rare to have and we’re grateful for it. It has filled my enriched core desired feeling.

One of my best friends got married this year and I had the pleasure of spending time with her and her friends for her Bachelorette and the day before the Wedding. We had a great time connecting, really great conversations were had and it was so nice to be around amazing women in person, having adult conversations. Happy. Thank You. More Please.

Home

I had two goals for the home category. The first was asking Mike to build me living room built-ins which we didn’t end up building as Mike ended up putting a rock climbing wall on one side of the fireplace and I started setting up a makeshift homeschool space for the twins on the other side.

I outsourced cleaning this year and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made. Having someone come in every other week just makes my life easier and is worth every penny. Our home just feels more serene when it’s neat and tidy and less dog hair milling about.

Couple

I’m really proud of how we connected as a couple this year.

Every single month I have a reminder in my reminder app scheduled to remind me to book our weekly date night. So I schedule them in our calendar, Date Night – Robyn Plans one week and then Date Night – Mike Plans the next week. I send the dates to my parents for the month and ask if they can babysit. We usually put the kid’s to bed at 7:30 pm and then head out to do something. While we could always ask my parents to put the kid’s to bed our bedtime routine just seems so complicated so it’s easier to do it ourselves and then head out.

We’ve been loving escape rooms, going out for oysters and a drink or dinner, we’ve even tried our hand at a few VR experiences and then we’ll use date nights to connect with a couple friend of ours and we’ve just recently started making friends with one of the neighbours on our street.

We have also prioritized going for a morning walk with our dogs every day and it’s so simple but so amazing. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we just walk. It’s just nice to start our day with each other.

Last but not least, we’ve had some of the most difficult conversations of our entire relationship this past year. And while they were extremely heavy they have been the most rewarding and have led to the most growth in our relationship. I am truly proud of how we work through communication together and grow together.

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.

In addition to scheduling my weekly date nights with my husband, I also schedule a monthly Mommy/Daughter & Daddy/Son date and a monthly Mommy/Son & Daddy/Daughter date. We’ve been successful in keeping these and doing little things with our kids but so many times we’ve just stuck together as a family because our kids didn’t actually want to separate. We’ll keep scheduling them because it’s important our kid’s get dedicated time with each of us.

Our winter bucket list this year consisted of:

We managed to check off tobogganing, snowball fight, ice fishing, ice skating trail, build a snowman, make apple cider, snow angels, and the go anywhere activity.

We didn’t end of skating on the canal because it was never able to open. I had booked dog sledding but we got sick the weekend we were supposed to go. I simply forgot to schedule a games night for us and the kids were just too young to tackle a puzzle and I just didn’t think about doing a puzzle myself.

Our summer bucket list consisted of…

Here we were able to go SUPing, head up to the cottage a few times, multiple trips to the beach while on Vancouver Island, dance in the rain, build sandcastles, strawberry picking, fishing, Toronto Aquarium, splash pad visits, backyard bonfires, water balloon fights, hiking, catch fireflies, make stores, frontward obstacle course, sprinkler fun and water gun fights!

I can’t remember why I didn’t book a drive-in movie for us and I think it turned out that boogie boarding while on Vancouver Island was just too early for our kids.

Overall, I love how I prioritized our family and growing our bonds and doing things together. I can’t wait to make new memories next year.

Financial

I had a few financial goals for this year:

6% annual growth for our investments
Plan a few large purchases
Support Mike getting his pilot’s license.

Despite the markets struggling this year our investments grew 5%, we were able to purchase a new luxury vehicle, I flew first class for one of my trips and we’ve been able to live incredibly comfortably this year. I don’t know what happened with Mike’s pilot’s license, writing this post reminded me to ask him lol.

How did your 2023 go?

The Essential Planning Goal Setting Method

9 / 28 / 2311 / 4 / 24

Goal setting doesn’t need to be a tedious or stressful process.

Let me break down my annual goal-setting method (The Essential Planning Method) that I’ve been using for countless years for you to steal.

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 over the years and I can’t wait to share it with you.

The essential annual goal-setting method is a mish-mash of Danielle Laporte’s Desire Map, Chalene Johnson’s 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 revived and revamped the format and made it my own. I created the pages for those that love goal-setting and getting, love tracking their healthy habits, need a boost of motivation and enjoy essential oils. I’m hoping you’ll love it as much as I love using mine in 2024.

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 (I’ve got this figured out).

Step 3: Lowest Category Score Core Desired Feeling

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.

Step 8: 3 Monthy Goals, 3 Weekly Goals, 3 Daily Goals

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.