Are you ready to achieve your goals in 2022? A brand new year is just a few short weeks away. Those weeks will be full and busy, so chances are you won’t have time to think, much less plan strategy for the new year.
Before the holiday season gets well underway, spend a few minutes thinking about 2021. Did you achieve your goals this year?
Did you achieve your goals in 2021?
Perhaps you didn’t set goals. No matter where you are in the world, the past couple of years have been turbulent, so perhaps you stopped setting goals.
However, consider setting goals for the new year. The major benefit of setting goals isn’t achievement, oddly enough: it’s direction.
Your goals show you where you want to go—they’re a useful aide-memoire for your busy life, because life always gets in the way. No matter how many wishes you make, or how determined you are, life messes things up.
Indeed, as soon as you set a goal and start working towards it, you’ll strike obstacles. (Try the WOOP process when this happens.)
No matter what 2021 was like for you, take a few minutes to review the year:
- What worked out for you? Make a list.
- Can you recall a disaster? Write a brief description. If you haven’t taken steps to avert a similar disaster, consider doing that.
- Your primary achievement: what fills your heart with pride?
- Your biggest wish for 2022: write it down.
Your year’s review can be as long or short as you want to make it. Take five minutes, or five hours. Time doesn’t matter. You simply want to know where you are, and where you wish to be, at the end of 2022.
Achieve your goals in 2022: imagine achieving them
If you can’t imagine it, it won’t happen. A close corollary: if you don’t write it down, it won’t happen.
Imagine that it’s next year, on this date. Take a pen and your journal, or open a new computer file.
Write this phrase: what I’m most proud of in 2022… Keep writing, for at least five minutes. What you write will give you a starting point to create exciting goals for 2022.
Please do the exercise. It works. You’ll set goals which matter to you. You can set goals in any area of your life (repeat the exercise, if your top-of-mind goals for an area seem uninspiring.)
Consider setting an income goal. For writers and all small business people, financial goals are vital.
Achieve your goals for your small business income
As we said in this article about your writing income:
… there’s no ceiling on your income as a freelance writer.
You can earn as much as you like.
Too true. You can earn as much as you like, but to do that, you’ll need to be aware of how much you want to make each year, and you’ll need to fight for it.
It’s all too easy to fall into a rut—or to be overwhelmed by sudden disasters. The income we make depends on us. Yes, we’ll suffer setbacks. However, rather than allowing setbacks rule us, we can commit to dealing with obstacles as they arise, then getting back (with new plans) to our goals.
How to achieve your goals: create a goal workbook
Recently I chatted with a former editor, an old friend from my magazine writing days. She suggested creating a motivational goal workbook—a journal, but also a companion notebook in which you can create and complete exercises.
If you tend to procrastinate, or forget to work towards your goals each day, a goal workbook will help.
My friend is always heavily booked as a motivational trainer for big companies, so I took her suggestion to heart. My current goal workbook contains Tomoe River paper and is thick. It’s impossible to carry with me, but it’s ideal for daily journalling.
I adore my journals, so finding another way of journaling made me happy. After working with the goal workbook for a month, I’ve decided to integrate it into my planning tools in 2022.
What are you doing NOW to achieve your goals in the upcoming year? Take five minutes for a quick review of 2021.
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Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
Copywriter and marketing pro Angela Booth maintains a busy copywriting and ghostwriting practice. Fascinated by online marketing, she wrote one of the first business books for internet marketing, published by Allen & Unwin. She’s been an enthusiastic blogger since the late 1990s.
