Don’t you love spring and how it entices you with anticipation, optimism and renewal? How the longer, warmer days encourage you get outdoors, connect with nature and embrace your world? This is why I find spring to be an opportune time to review your annual goals, check your lists twice (or thrice!) and re-evaluate your achievements. And once that’s done, move some of your unfulfilled 2023 priorities to the top of your goals list.

Looking back at the goals I set back at the start of the year, I’m feeling confident I’m on track. So far, so good! Some I’ve met. Some are a work in progress. Some, by default, fall into the warm weather timeframe, so they’re on the horizon.

Of course, we’re all human, so some goals need be restarted or tweaked, which is why May is a perfect time to take pause and reset. There’s still a lot of the year left to get some great traction on finding personal success with achieving our goals.

Structure Your Goals to Find Success

In January, I committed to my goals through three methods that I summarize below. Read my “New Year, Even Better You?” post to get the full picture of my goal planning. If you didn’t commit to goals yet this year, don’t despair. You have eight months to work on them!

Three Methods to Create Goals

1. Create top-level categories for your goals (such as home, travel, wellness, etc.) and then mini goals and tasks that roll up under them. I entered these into my Commit30 goals journal.
2. Requiring some deep thinking, draft a “23 in 23” list. This is a great free-form thinking exercise to tap into new, creative and even outside-your-comfort-zone ideas. You may find yourself wanting to do things you hadn’t considered.
3. Define a one-word theme for the year. This one I particularly love, as it’s a concise summation of what I want to achieve this year by zeroing in on one word or phrase. Below I explain why I chose my theme word “stride” and what it represents to me:  

How I Define My One-Word Theme: Stride

• Signifies energy of movement with talking long steps, to walk with a mission, being deliberate and resolute.
• Allows for me to pace myself by taking steps as part of a bigger plan or process, to put something into action/operation, to phase it in.
• Represents being outdoors and connecting with nature, unwinding with every stride, carving out time to reflect and think.
• Inspires me because one of my goals is walking more this year; unfortunately, in 2022 I didn’t get enough walks in, as I allowed deadline work get in the way.
• Reminds me to take things in stride: to shrug it off, take a breath and deal calmly.

Things You Can Check Off Your List

If you can check off about a quarter or a third of your goals as completed, including those in process, you’re in good shape. I wasn’t sure if I was on track, but looking through my top-level goals, 23 in 23 list and one-word theme, I realize I’m doing pretty darn good. Some things on my list are totally incumbent upon the weather to transform from spring to summer, such as gardening and summer excursions. Others are ongoing throughout the year; while some I just need to start working on, like some financial planning tasks I keep putting off.

Things That Remain in Progress

I’m happy with the progress on many of my mini goals and tasks I want to work on throughout the year. Take a look at your list, as I’m sure you have priorities that need to be the forefront through the year. Check them out to see if you need to move some to the top of your goals list. Some of my ongoing in-progress goals include:

• Planning time for relationships (family, friends and the hubs), hosting gatherings, doing projects with the grandkids.  
• Invest time for personal growth to read more, write and blog more, try my hand at poetry and educate myself through various online resources to improve my blog.
• Make my personal health a priority with following a healthy way of eating and exercising regularly.
• Ensure I take stock of mental and spiritual health. I will track gratitude in my journal, connect with nature, lighten up and laugh more and try to not be a people pleaser (as much!).

Things You Need to Focus on  

If you’re like me, there’s a bulk of goals that can only happen during the warm season which make this exercise to review goals even more important. What do you want to do from now through October?

Many align with my happiness goals that include gardening, time spent on the water, being outdoors and summer travel and excursions. Plus, there are home goals I hope to tackle with interior updates, purging projects and decorating.

I realized today, I want to expand upon my summer goals with a bucket list. The hubs and I keep saying what we want to do in conversation, but a written list is essential (and satisfying when you check fun things off!). So, with that said, I highly recommend you jotting down your summer bucket list! I do a bucket list before my vacations now, and it really helps us squeeze more in and try new things.

You Can Set Your Goals Anytime

There are no rules here. You can develop your goals any day of the year for a month, season or year. Don’t put off what you can do today for tomorrow. If you want to set goals now, just do it.

As shared in my goal planning blog in January, this summarizes what I learned from my personal experience setting goals last year:

I’m quite pleased with my 2022 goal planning. In my mind, if 2022 was good, 2023 will be even better. The simple process of journaling using a goal planner helped me keep an open mind and do new things. It also helped keep my life on track and get more done. I wasn’t perfect, but I take pride knowing what I got accomplished.

Excerpt from Literally Laurie December 31 post

Goals Invigorate Our Happiness

Some may think having goals to complete during the year just add another layer of stress to our already busy lives. But really, setting personal goals shouldn’t put pressure on us. They give us the freedom to act on tasks that will ultimately make us happier and feel more accomplished. They free us to turn our goals into reality and cultivate our ideas.

I leave you with this final thought: In the back of our minds, we entertain thoughts for something we want to do without acting on them. This inertia depletes and defeats us when another year passes and we’re no closer to what we want. Take a leap of faith. You may find it changes your life!

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