This week seemed like a great opportunity for reflection.
After all, the beginning of a new month usually feels like a fresh start to me.
I don’t want to say that I’ve mastered my 2023 goal of washing my face most days, but I’ve been doing pretty well overall.
So, I’ve been considering adding in more goals.
(I have a lot of goals I want to accomplish this year).
I knew at the beginning of the year that I couldn’t handle everything all at once.
But the idea of adding a new goal every month also seems overwhelming.
How do we make our existing goals “stick” while adding new goals, anyway?
Consider History
I know one motivational tool is usually to consider your past successes.
When I reflect back on goals I’ve set before, the results have been mixed.
Success
Sarah and I have been exercising together pretty consistently for the last three years.
That’s a long time!
We’ve tried everything from barre to HIIT and yoga.
We’ve kept the workout elements that work and ditched the routines we enjoyed less.
We’ve worked out six days per week for stretches of time and scaled it back to three days per week during other seasons.
I love that this habit persists even as it continues to evolve and change. To me, this success is all about accountability.
Not-so-much Success
A goal that fell by the wayside, though, relates to this workout habit.
At one point, we introduced hot lemon water to our morning routines. So Sarah and I would sip on our hot lemon tea while we worked out in the morning, and I loved how this act helped me hydrate before my morning coffee.
When we had to pause our regular workouts for a few months in 2022 when my house flooded, the lemon water routine disappeared.
It always seems harder to resurrect a habit – even if it was previously successful – once it has lapsed.
When I think about the importance of these two goals in the grander scheme of things, I would say that working out regularly is more important to me than drinking the lemon water was.
And that makes me feel good about the fact that the goal that “stuck” is my higher priority.
There are many other significant life changes I have made through goal setting, so this practice of considering my past successes is definitely beneficial.
Keep It Simple
If I have learned anything in the last few years, it is that simplicity is key for me.
Whether it comes to having a simplified wardrobe or making mornings less stressful, if I want to maintain a habit, it has to be simple.
And so I think my accidental approach to setting goals in 2023 – taking it one small goal at a time – has been really key.
In January, I just focused on washing my face most nights (rather than trying to wash my face, drink lemon water, work out every day by participating in a 30-day challenge, upend my eating habits, and…well, you get the point).
In February, I kept washing my face regularly but also decided to actively strive for 10,000 or more steps per day.
Most days, I exceeded 10K and landed somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 steps.
But this leads nicely to my last tip for goal setting…
Strive for Progress, Not Perfection
I have really embraced the opposite of an all-or-nothing mindset this year, I think.
Instead of throwing in the towel when I miss a goal a few times during the month, I just keep starting the next day anew.
Like my morning routine and my nightly reset, there are just days where a goal isn’t met.
I don’t wash my face every. single. night.
I don’t hit 10,000 steps every day. Especially since it is cold and flu season around here and some days, a sick kid just wants to snuggle all day on the couch.
But I’m happy any day I see a little check mark on my watch showing I’ve achieved my steps goal – even more so because the rainy, snowy New England winters are usually a low point of activity for me.
So, in the upcoming month of March, I’m going to continue this trend.
I’ll look at my successes – recent and historical – and maintain my new simple habits while adding another small goal. One that I won’t beat myself up for missing now and then.
The March Goal
Choose more vegetables at meal and snack times and watch my portions.
I’m not jumping into a “diet” or setting rigid boundaries.
The goal may develop and evolve to become more specific over time.
But right now, I just want to ease into healthier choices that will help propel me toward another potential goal (running a 10K in May?!? Eek!)
Stay tuned for more of my goal progress – and to find out if I make it to the 10K. Training starts this month!