Christmas is over and now my thoughts turn to the new year. What will it bring? What challenges will I face? What do I want to accomplish?

Growing up I was taught how to set goals through a program our church has for the teenage girls. It is called Personal Progress.

You can easily attain your goals by mapping out areas of your life where you want to improve. The goals can be getting rid of old bad habits and making better habits or developing talents by learning new skills.

You are never too old or young to learn how to set goals and make a plan to achieve them.

STEPS TO ACHIEVING A GOAL

• Pick a goal category.
• Think of what you want to accomplish.
• Come up with a SPECIFIC thing that you can do that will help you work towards your goal.
• Decide how often you will revisit the goal to check your progress.
• Revisit and re-evaluate your goal.
• When accomplished, set another goal.

(FREE Printable:Goal Worksheet)

As I think of this I find myself putting my goals into 3 categories:

1. Personal
   
   What do I want to do with my life personally? As much as my blog may make me look like the happy perfect housewife, I am no where near that and have many flaws I need to work on.
   
   Physically: What are my health goals? Do I need to exercise more? Do I need to eat more nutriously? If yes, then I should select a specific goal like drinking 8 glasses of water a day for 1 month, or doing 100 jumping jacks every morning for 1 week. If I don’t write something specific, then it will be harder to measure if I’m really keeping my goal. Once I accomplish these, then I can lengthen them out or change to another specific goal.
   
   Spiritually: Am I intune spiritually like I should be? Am I reading my scriptures each day? Do I say my prayers morning and night and on my meals? Again, what specific goals can I set?

   Emotionally: I find I’m in that time of life where my body’s hormones are changing and I’m more negative than positive it seems. This year I would like to work on changing that and being a more positive person. Seeing the glass as “half full” instead of “half empty”. I’m positive (no pun intended) that this isn’t going to be as easy as it seems. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to learn to bite my tongue a lot. So what specific goals could I set to help me in this area? How about the old one of “Count to 10 when you are upset before you say anything.”
   

2. Family
   
   The number one goal I think our family has is to move to a larger home. We have been looking for the past 7 months and have not found the solution. There are so many options from buying a home an hour away from my husband’s work to renting a home in our current city for a lot more money. But which one is the best solution? I’m not sure yet. All I know is that we need a bigger place as we have outgrown this home long ago.

   Another goal we have is to do more fun activities together. This last year we did not go on as many outings as we have in the past due to our house hunting. This year I would like to sit down with my family and plan a year of activities and schedule them on the calendar.

   What goals do you have for your family?

3. Work/Educational
   
   The one year anniversary of Preserving Home Basics is this January. It has grown into a big job. One that I do enjoy doing, but it does take a lot of time.

   Increasing my readership is a big goal that I have. Another is to have more craft tutorials. To reach these goals I need to come up with a simple calendar of when I will work on my blog and when I will post on my different categories.

I believe organization, making small attainable goals, visual reminders, and reviewing goals often is the key to reaching goals.

FREE Printable:Goal Worksheet

I’d love to hear what some of your goals are this new year. Leave a comment below!