Since it’s New Year’s Eve I thought it was a good time to slot the “new year’s goals” entry into the blogmas calendar.
I don’t make resolutions. I make goals. I discovered Lara Casey’s Powersheets in 2015 right after I’d left my job at the Senate, and they literally changed my life. I wouldn’t have written—or published!—my book without them!
(No I don’t get paid to say that, I just LOVE THEM)
So ever since then, I’ve used them to set goals for the year. The Powersheets break these goals down into monthly “tending lists”, which are broken down even further into Monthly Action Items, Weekly Action Items, and Daily Action Items.
I do the “prep work” in November and December, and I usually write out the tending list for the next month on the last Thursday of the month, which was yesterday.
So here are my goals for 2022! (I’m summarizing here. There are some things that I keep to myself, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. :) )
1) To be healthier by doing workouts I enjoy, and giving myself grace as I learn new things.
2) To have secure finances by tracking daily spending and fine-tuning my budget so that I can increase my savings.
3) To “re-create” my home to reflect my taste, personality, and needs.
(THIS is basically my aesthetic)
Yesterday I made my tending list for the month: (yes I blurred some things out :) )
Each goal has a color attached to it as you can see here. The hot pink is for spiritual growth—that’s a never-ending goal, so I don’t purposely “set that” as a goal each year.
Monthly Action Items
Create healthy snack list: This is harder than it sounds for me. As I’ve written before, one of the hardest things for me post transplant has been the food adjustment. Before transplant, I was never really hungry. You read that right. Never. I might like some things, but I didn’t crave food, or really get hungry.
Post-transplant….um, that changed. :) Which was GOOD! I grew an inch and a half! My body was so malnourished that it took everything I was throwing at it, and I physically filled out. But…I didn’t know how to really eat. And also I’m on prednisone forever, which messes up hunger cues. So before when I was never really hungry, now I’m never really not hungry. I could always eat something.
Throw diabetes on top of that, and it’s messy. So one of the things I want to do this month is create a healthy snack list and then stock my house according. A healthy snack, for my purposes, is one that combines protein+fat+carbs (Yes, people like me do need to have carbs. Fairly regularly, actually, or else the blood sugar plummets and that’s not good either.).
The January Cure is a thing Apartment Therapy does. It’s a 20 day house cleaning/organizing challenge.
Wellness challenge I am all signed up for!
February budget: I use EveryDollar (the free version) and I love it!
Retreat Day: I do this monthly. It’s a day when I turn off my electronics and read, work out, and look over my goals for the next month.
Confession: I’m working on going to confession once a month. So I write it down here so I don’t forget to do it!
Weekly Action Items
These are all health related:
Meal plan: I used to be good about this and then I slacked off. I generally plan for 4-5 days of meals so I have some flexibility if I just don’t feel like cooking and instead have PBJ, or my parents invite me over for dinner or a friend wants to go out!
Weigh: Every week. Yes.
Barre 2x/week: This isn’t barre like pure barre or barre 3. This is ballet barre, using YouTube videos. And no, I don’t mean an entire barre, which is about 45-50 minutes. Right now, my goal is 10-15 minutes of barre twice a week. This isn’t all the exercise I do in a week, but I want to make sure I do these, so that’s why they’re a weekly goal.
Daily Action Items/Habits:
BIAY: the Bible In A Year podcast. I started last May, so I want to make sure that I keep going! (Folks, this is amazing. I love doing it. (Here’s a post on what I’ve learned so far—I need to write another one of these!)
January Cure Items: This is the daily accountability for the January Cure Monthly item.
Budget check in: This used to be called “balancing your checkbook”. :) But this is where I reconcile my budget with my actual spending.
TA-DA! That’s my January tending list and my goals for 2022! How about you? What goals have you set?
CHRISTMAS MUSIC: “In The Bleak Midwinter” from Renee Fleming and Rufus Wainwright