From self-care goals to habits, part 2

“First comes the vision, then comes the plan.”

Welcome back to our series on turning self-care goals into actionable habits! In the first part of this series, I shared that, according to the authors of The 12 Week Year, the first step for executing goals is to identify your vision. (So if you haven’t read that blog post, stop what you’re doing and check it out here!)

After you have your vision, next is your plan! Now, I don’t want to spoil the entire book for you, but the authors make some good points about turning your vision into a plan.

Here are some of my favorite tips:

1) Make your goals specific.

Goals are great until it’s time to execute, then sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what to do next. That’s why it’s so important to be SPECIFIC with your goals. Specific goals will help you identify the habits and rituals you need to adopt to achieve your goals.

For example, let’s say one of your self-care goals is to become healthier. Well…that's great, but what does that mean? What does “becoming healthier” look like for you? When you envisioned a healthier version of yourself, what was that person doing to be healthier? Did he exercise 3 times per week? Did they cut out meat from their diet? Perhaps she gave up Diet Coke.

Look, this process can already be hard, don’t make it harder by being too broad with your goals. Make them specific and trackable so you can celebrate your progress.

2) Be realistic.

Don’t set yourself up for failure. Be realistic with your goals!

But don’t undersell yourself either. In fact, your goals should be challenging but not impossible to achieve. You want your goals to be challenging enough to push you outside of your comfort zone, but not to the point where the habits are more harmful than good.

It’s hard to know how you can challenge yourself without being unrealistic. (If you’ve been in this community long enough, you might know where this is going…)

One way to be honest with yourself to create challenging and realistic goals is by journaling or some other self-care activity that helps you “audit” your life. Whether that be through traditional forms of journaling, therapy, etc., you have to know where you are in life and what areas need improvement and refining to create challenging yet realistic goals.

3) Stay focused.

This section is for all my people who throw their goals out the window when life gets tough (don’t worry I’m guilty of this too lol)!

Stay focused. When life gets tough, remember the end goal(s). If you fall behind or lose sight of your goals, right now is the perfect time to start again!

Like I said before when life gets tough, I can forget about my goals (especially the more challenging ones). Lately, I’ve used tools like affirmations and a vision board to remember the “why.” So if you’re struggling with the goals you create, try different ways to remind yourself of the reason(s) you created your goals in the first place!

Now it’s time to grab your favorite pen and some paper to write your plan. How will you turn your vision into actionable goals?