Today on the podcast, Gennavieve and I discussed how to generate some ideas and then refine those ideas into a defined set of goals. We decided to make our first month of the podcast, as well as the first month of the year, goal month! We hope that by providing some of the ways we decide on and enact our action plans to meet our goals, that you can do the same! This is especially important around this time of year when so many of us make all these New Year’s resolutions that, for most of them, we genuinely want to stick with in the coming year. So let’s do it this year!

For the first installment of goals month we are starting from the very beginning, generating ideas for possible goals! The reason we are starting here is that we, and a lot of our friends when asked about our goals, simply didn’t know where to start. Having goals and the process to go about figuring out what our goals should be was an overwhelming thought; so many of us just didn’t want to start it. But the truth is, once you have a few meaningful goals, you begin to feel an amazing sense of purpose and you begin to get excited about what’s to come instead of just stressed out about it. Once you have goals and an action plan to reach those goals, you drive the direction you go in instead of feeling like your life is out of your control.

Idea Generation

If you are starting from ground 0 with goals, meaning you don’t have any and would like some, we agreed that a Goals Brainstorm is a great way to get started! There are multiple ways to approach this and Gennavieve and I had different approaches, so choose one of these ideas for your brainstorm and start writing down anything that comes to mind!

Goals Brainstorm!

• Look at your values and write your values down – goals and ideas can stem from your values like they do for Gennavieve
• What are your end goals? What do you need to do this year to reach those end goals? This is how I come up with my goals for the year!
• Write down anything at all that comes to mind and look for the trends

Another helpful tool I used in my goal brainstorm was to write the ideas that I was more excited about larger than ideas I was less excited about. Your brainstorm can just be singular words or short descriptions to something already formatted as a goal; however the brainstorm comes out, it will be useful!

If you need a more guided format to come up with some of your goals or some jumping off points, download our free Goals Brainstorm printable!

Refining Your Ideas

Now that you have some ideas for goals, you need to refine and add depth to the ideas you decide you want to make in to goals.

To begin this process, look at your idea brainstorm and decide which ideas are related to what is most important to you. If you used our worksheet or categorized your brainstorm, our recommendation is to select one idea from each category to move forward with. Select the ideas you felt were most important to you or represent what you want to work on and move on to the next step!

Once you have a few ideas that support the important aspects of your life, it is good to add some details and depth to these ideas.

Say your idea was, “get in better shape”. When reviewing your ideas you felt that getting into better shape was most important to you. Now that you know where your priorities are, add depth to your ideas, for example:

I think we can get even more specific than that!

Go through this process of adding detail to your goals with each goal you have selected to move forward with! Once you have done that you can start planning for your goals and acting upon them which we will talk about in next week’s episode! Until then…