Keep Your Goals On Your Mind

As we wrap up this year and look forward to 2020, you’re probably thinking about your goals and resolutions. About the ones you achieved, the ones you made progress on, and then let’s be honest- the ones you failed at or didn’t even start. I’m with you!

Goals are easy to set, and hard to follow through on. Here’s some of the ways I keep my goals on the top of my mind. 

• Make It Visual- Making your goals VISUAL is super helpful- check out this post I made about my 2019 vision board so you can make your own. You can go digital and then print it out like I did or do it all in paper form, but either way, having a collection of images that represent the life you want will help you subconsciously be aware of your goals every time you see it. 

• Revisit Them Regularly - Remind yourself of your goals by rewriting them regularly- either every week as you prep for Monday or even every day as part of a quick journaling exercise. I use Rachel Hollis’ Start Today journal for this- shop here! 

• Break Down Goals to Quarterly and Monthly Tasks- Tracking the progress I make on my goals has literally been a game changer for me. I use this workbook to set and review annual, quarterly and monthly goals. When you take apart your big goals into little achievable action steps, it’s easier to actually make progress. 

• Track Your Habits- I’ve learned that the little things you do everyday are what determine whether you make progress on a goal or not. If I have a goal to cook dinner regularly at home, tracking how many times per week I actually do cook at home reminds me to plan ahead so that I can accomplish that and get me back on track when I can see that it’s not happening. Here’s a free habit tracker from Day Designer.

Hopefully, those ideas can help you ACTUALLY meet your goals and resolutions for 2020. Comment below with one thing you really want to achieve next year! 

Have a great week, 
Meghan 

Hey, I’m Meghan

I’m here sharing content all about pursuing your own version of more and loving how you feel doing it. If that sounds good to you, stick around and let’s be friends!

How to Tackle A Big Project

Whether it’s work-related, personal or a project around your house, we all have things we’d like to take on (or have to take on, in some work cases). When you’re standing at the beginning of a huge task with lots of steps, it can feel so overwhelming and like you don’t even know where to begin. Here’s the steps that I use when I’m facing a huge project. These steps helped me start this blog, plan a trip to Ireland, and decorate my new house. I hope you will find them useful, too! 

1.BRAINSTORM- Get all of your ideas out onto paper. Especially when you have no idea where to start, getting all of the thoughts about the project out of your brain and into one page so you can start to wrap your brain around it. For example,  If you are planning a redecoration of your living room, you might write down everything from paint colors to plants to cleaning out the TV cabinet. There’s no rules for a brainstorm- just write down any and every thing you can think of around the topic and you’ll organize it later.

2. LAY IT OUT LOGISTICALLY- Look at your brainstorm and figure out what needs to happen first or what needs to happen before other items can get done. For the example above, you’d need to paint the walls before you hung up new wall art, and you’d want to wait to buy a rug until you found new furniture for the room so  that you knew what size you needed.

3. PRIORITIZE- Some tasks for your project may not be time bound in any way. If that is the case, look at the whole scope of your project and decide what’s most important to you. Maybe getting a new light fixture would be great, but it doesn’t mean as much to you as getting a new couch. Big projects can often come up against time or financial constraints (or both). Choosing your priorities ahead of time makes sure that you spend your time and energy on the most important parts of the project. 

4. SCHEDULE IT- After you’ve organized and prioritized the steps for your project, you should have a clearer idea of where you need to begin. Identify the first few steps you need to take and give yourself a timeline for getting it done. For your living room redecoration, maybe step one is to research new decor ideas on PInterest or take a shopping trip to some furniture stores to get ideas on what you’d like in your new space. Take a look at your calendar and pick a day when you have time to do those first few tasks and schedule time in to do it. 

5. TAKE ACTION- All of the planning and organization in the world won’t help you get a project done if you don’t actually DO the things that you’ve planned. Once you’ve scheduled something in, you have to follow through on it. Make the steps as simple and easy as possible, especially at first, so that they are easy for you to accomplish and follow through on. 

I hope that helps give you some ideas on how you can ACTUALLY take a big project or goal from idea to reality. Comment below on one of the projects you are currently working on! 

Hey, I’m Meghan

I’m here sharing content all about pursuing your own version of more and loving how you feel doing it. If that sounds good to you, stick around and let’s be friends!

5 Questions for A Better Year

YOU.GUYS. It’s freaking September today, SEPT.EM.BER. How did we even get here? Wasn’t it just May yesterday? I swear the time goes by faster every year. We are officially in the last part of 2019, but it’s not too late to make the most of the year that you have left. We often get so caught up in living the day to day tasks and responsibilities of our lives that we can forget to stop and take a step back and ask ourselves if we are really living our best lives. (And not the Instagram version of your best life. Your ACTUAL best life). 

As I am taking some time this week to get clear about my plans for the end of the year, I thought I’d challenge you to spend some time thinking about creating the life you want as well. 

Here’s five questions to ask yourself: 

1. What do I wish I did more of?

2. What things make me feel the happiest? How can I do these things more?

3. What constitutes a life that I am proud of?

4. What is draining my time or energy?

5. What kind of people do I want to surround myself with?

Literally take out a piece of paper and write down your thoughts. And most importantly, use what you’ve learned from this exercise to plan your September. Pick a date. Plan the time. Make it happen. I know you can! And your future self will thank you for it.

Have a great week ahead, 

Meghan 

Hey, I’m Meghan

I’m here sharing content all about pursuing your own version of more and loving how you feel doing it. If that sounds good to you, stick around and let’s be friends!

A Mid-Year Planning Session

Hey guys! As usual, time is completely flying and the end of June marks that 2019 is half over. While I still have no idea how that happened, I am excited to use July as kind of a mini-January. (A mini January without the snow- what could be better?) What I mean by that is that I get to the end of the year happy with how my year went. Here’s how you can do a mid-year check-in too:

Revisit your 2019 goals- It’s probably been a minute since you’ve looked at these babies and now is as good of a time as any to check back in with them. I write my goals down on paper, but if you didn’t, it’s not too late to start or even to just start thinking about what you would like to get done in the rest of 2019. Take a look at what you’d laid out for yourself in January and see what things you’ve accomplished, what things you want to work on next, and what things you thought you wanted to do, but just aren’t a priority anymore and can get crossed off your list.

Check your habits- When it comes to actually getting goals accomplished, it’s often the little daily habits we work on that truly give you traction for achieving goals. Are you doing the little things every day that get you to where you want to be? For example, if you want to read 10 books this year, are you setting aside the time you need each day to read? Or to get other stuff done so you can enjoy a big reading session on a weekend? If you want to go on a trip this year, are you setting aside time to plan and prepare? The secret to moving your life forward is often found in the little actions you take on a regular basis.

Audit your calendar- Take a few minutes and review your calendar from the first six months of the year. What did you do that you really enjoyed? What things did you not get to do that you’d like to now? Lives are busy and it takes intentional planning to get fun things on your calendar. This week, I looked at my calendar for the rest of the summer and scheduled in the two weekends that we’ll be heading up to our cabin. It’s one of our favorite places to be and my fall schedule at work is too crazy so I wanted to be sure we made the time to enjoy it while we can,

When it comes to goal setting and habit tracking, I’ve found the most AMAZING tool that I wanted to share with you. (NOT sponsored!) I’ve talked about this on my Insta stories before, but The Artist of Life Workbook is what I use to set, review and track annual, quarterly and monthly goals. It was my first year using this tool and I cannot say enough good things about how much it’s helped me.

Have a great rest of your Sunday and we’ll see you back here next week. Be sure to check me out on Instagram for your daily dose of Morning Coffee.

Hey, I’m Meghan

I’m here sharing content all about pursuing your own version of more and loving how you feel doing it. If that sounds good to you, stick around and let’s be friends!

My Weekly Review Process

We all have a lot to do. Some of those things we *have* to do, like laundry, keep a child or pet alive, go to work, have food to eat, etc. and some of them are things that we’d like to do, like working out, reading, working on a big goal or dream, or having time for a hobby that just makes us happy.

The time that you have for the things you WANT to do usually depends on how efficiently you can get your “have to-dos” done. Every week, I spend time on Sunday evening to review my previous week and set myself up for the week ahead. Doing this allows me to have time for all of my must-dos and most importantly, allows me to MAKE time for the things I want to do. Here’s how I do it:

• Review the past week: I pull out my calendar (mine’s on paper, but yours could be digital as well) and look over the past week. I find it motivating to take a look at all of my wins for the week-the things I actually got done- and remind myself of the items that didn’t get prioritized and finished. If something didn’t get done, I ask myself if it is really something that still has to happen- and if it does, I move it to the coming week so I don’t lose track of it.

• Review next week’s calendar: I then go ahead to look at the next seven days. I look at my work schedule, our social calendar, the weather, etc. to start making a plan for how our week will flow. There are certain things I do every week- like cardio, reading my current book, posting a blog post, etc but my work schedule changes every week. I move my tasks around in the week to wherever  my open pockets of time are.

• Review the menu for the week: I recently posted all about how I meal plan for my household of two so I won’t reiterate that here, but I do plan our meals every week on Sunday.

• Review my goals: I’m a goal person. I have goals that I set each year, and then I break those down in quarterly and monthly goals so I can actually make progress on achieving them. See my 2019 goals here! Many people set goals but then don’t actually follow through on getting them done. Reviewing mine on a regular basis has been *KEY* to continuing to make progress. If you don’t have goals set at the moment, start now! You don’t have to wait for January 1st, or the first of the month, or for Monday to set goals. You can start today.

• Review my habits: When it comes to achieving your goals, daily habits are really the thing that make goals happen. Every week, I remind myself of the habits I want to put into every day so that I can keep moving forward. For me, that’s writing in my Start Today journal and reading for ten minutes in the morning.  In the evening, that means packing our lunches for work and calendar blocking my time for the next day.

Sunday is just that day where we spend a ton of time getting our lives together, right? Add a few of the things above to your Sunday, and you’ll really feel like you are all set for the new week. Monday doesn’t have to feel overwhelming if your Sunday was productive. Have a great week ahead!

Hey, I’m Meghan

I’m here sharing content all about pursuing your own version of more and loving how you feel doing it. If that sounds good to you, stick around and let’s be friends!