I truly believe in the importance of reflection. Any person interested in self-improvement and reaching their goals should be in a constant state of reflecting, assessing, learning, and adjusting. However, if I’m honest, I always go back and forth with the idea of making new year resolutions because we should not wait for a new year to reset and adjust. Nevertheless, I think this post is applicable any time you find yourself setting new goals, even if it’s the same goal you’ve been working on for years.

So, whether you are setting goals for a new year or in a planning mood in the middle of the year, I hope you find something in this post to help you recharge, refocus, and remember your greatness.

How to explore this post: Choose your own adventure! This is organized as a guided reflection with prompts to help you think. Then, under each section, there are a few previous blog posts that explore that topic. Read them all at once, a few at a time, or explore one that speaks to you based on where you are on your journey.

Start with Gratitude

Is the past holding you back from reaching your goals?

Thank You, Yesterday: Here is one practice you can use (every day) to honor the lessons from your past so you feel empowered to move forward. One of the biggest hurdles we have to overcome is the lingering negative narratives from our past. The moments of success and joyful memories keep us going, but the weight of mistakes, shame, guilt, and regrets can be crippling. Holding on to the past hinders us from improving. Let’s take a few moments to reflect on our past—with all its ups and downs—find the lessons and stop to say “thank you, yesterday.” 

Are there things you need to forgive yourself for?

Do You Need To Forgive Yourself?: Sometimes the mental block is from you not forgiving yourself for your past mistakes. If you’re wondering whether there’s deeper healing you need, this post includes a personal example and time to reflect.

Shift Your Perspective

Are you waiting for all the answers before you start?

Life is a Picture-Perfect Puzzle: Are you looking at other people’s lives like a masterpiece but your own as imperfect? Read this little story to help you see how small puzzle pieces matter in your life. They are beautiful. Borrowing pieces from someone else’s puzzle will never quite fit yours perfectly anyway.

Is comparison preventing you from pursuing your goals?

Why You Need to Embrace What Makes You Different: Read this for an important reminder to stop looking at other peoples’ lives and embrace (and share) what makes you different. You have something unique to offer this world. You are the puzzle piece someone is waiting for. Remember, your success is at the end of your road, not at the end of someone else’s.

Do you struggle with pursuing your goals because you’re secretly competing with others around you?

There is Room for Everyone: Success and Competition: This post talks about there being room for you, and everyone else. The world will make you think that only a few can succeed. We are taught to compete and compare ourselves to other people. But, success is often found at the end of your authentic path. In the end, you are really competing with yourself. However, it’s hard to see that most of the time.

Are you waiting for the perfect path to get started?

Epiphany: You Have Many Purposes: So, do you wait to figure out your purpose before you start? Or, do you find your purpose because you started? In this blog post, we discuss this very question. Oftentimes, we get stuck waiting for answers, but some things you don’t discover until you start moving.

Have you been wondering how you’re supposed to get from point A to point B given your circumstances right now?

How To Accept The Cards You Are Dealt: We do not all start with the same resources and opportunities in life. That’s a fact. Oftentimes, goal setting is the easy part; figuring out how to get from point A to point B is the hard part, especially if that distance feels impossible. So, what do you do next?

Don’t Forget To Prioritize Your Mental Health

Are you succeeding at the expense of your mental health? Or, is your mental health preventing you from achieving your goals?

A Short Guide to Becoming Whole: An Essential Part of Success: Whether you are pursuing a goal, trying to become a better version of yourself, or working to improve your life and relationships, you will quickly discover that it requires physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual health. You can get ahead in life as a broken, stressed, depleted version of yourself, but you will not get too far before wholeness starts calling for more attention.

5 Steps to Start Finding Inner Peace: If you’re human, then there are days when you might feel knocked off course and just plain uneasy because [insert any of the many triggers here]. Here are some steps you can take to start finding inner peace in those times.

The Importance of Changing Your Negative Self-Talk: What you say to yourself is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. It’s OK to acknowledge negative feelings at the moment, but the story you tell yourself should include positive self-talk, great outcomes, and reflect hope.

Happiness is a Choice, Not a Chase: Simply put, happiness is something we choose to experience and not something we stumble upon.

10 Steps to Finding Happiness: Happiness is defined as a state of well-being or contentment. It is an emotion felt when experiencing something pleasurable or satisfying. It can be fleeting, but a little shift in perspective can help us keep choosing and finding happiness more often than not. 

11 Questions to Help Clear Your Vision: Is your personal vision clear? Literally and figuratively, it was not until I cleaned my glasses and noticed the marked difference in clarity that I became aware of my blurred sight.

Prepare to Conquer Fear

Is fear louder than your faith right now? Are you afraid of the unknown?

On The Other Side of Fear: Reading my crazy story about my solo drive to the Grand Canyon in complete darkness will give you a good reminder about what lies on the other side of fear.

Shut Up and Fly: A quick little story to help you get out of your head and move forward.

Having Faith in Yourself: Do you have confidence that you can do what you are designed to do? Why do we believe in our own abilities less than we believe in others? Sometimes it is because we cannot see ourselves as clearly as we can see others. Other times, it might be because our fears and doubts obscure our ability to see all the great qualities that exist within us.

Prepare for Success

• Progress only happens through movement. If you take zero action, progress will not magically appear. So, goals happen by laying one brick at a time or taking one small step at a time.
• Progress happens when we get sick of hearing our own excuses and start doing something different.
• Actions really do speak louder than words. Dreams often die because of inaction.
• Growth requires personal accountability and discipline.
• Goals require action and patience. Growth will happen when you don’t get frustrated when you don’t see immediate results.

Are you running your own race?

Run At Your Own Pace: The next step for you is to continue to listen to your life. Learn when you need to sprint and when it is time to regroup and slow things down. Confidently stay in your own lane and focus on your own form and breathing. Your race was designed for YOU, so run at your own pace. No one else can run it and you cannot run someone else’s either. Worrying about who is passing you and who might catch up are only distractions.

How will you define your success?

Focus on Productivity, Not Perfection: Some of us are still holding out hope that a magical unicorn will fall from the sky and reveal the secret to perpetual perfection and happiness. Until that happens (spoiler: this will never happen ), we can all strive for greater productivity. Before you know it each day of action will add up and you will start to see that you’re even closer to your goal(s) than you thought!

Do you know when it’s time to stop, reflect, and regroup?

10 Signs It’s Time to Hit the Reset Button: Successful people know when it’s time to hit the reset button. It’s not a matter of if we will need to, it’s a matter of when and how many times. If we can increase our self-awareness, we can learn to hit the button before things spiral too far out of control. Yes, there are factors that are out of our control in life, but there are also many within it. 

Do you know how you will recharge?

Find Your Safe Space: We all need a place where we can exist unfiltered, unmasked, and free. These are moments and places we call safe spaces and they come in many different forms. If you don’t have any, let’s think about how you can find your safe space(s).

You Can Do This!

Goals require patience, passion, discipline, time management, consistency, and stamina. This time around focus on “I” statements. How am I taking control of this moment in my life? How I am taking control of my success and growth? I don’t know about you but I am ready to crush my goals this year!

What are you going to choose to take control of this year?