I’m Throwing Away Traditional Goal Setting…This is What I’m Doing Instead
First of all, Happy New Year and hello to all my people. In 2021, I dove deep into spending time with my son and serving my current clients. This year I’m back here in hopes to serve and connect with my community more consistently…I’ve missed you all! I’m also opening up a few spots and have some exciting programs I’ll be revealing in the weeks to come so stay tuned!
Back to the real purpose of my email. It’s the first week of the year and with that there is an energy of newness, of possibility, of excitement – and this year – maybe a little groundhog day. This is the time of year that we plan for the year ahead: we set our goals, we put a plan together, we amplify it all with the energy and momentum of a fresh start and we get to work.
I am no exception to this, most years I set tangible goals. ‘Ego’ based goals – financial goals for my business, where I want to be in my relationship (an engagement, a wedding, a baby), how many clients I want to have, how many posts I want to create, who I’m going to partner with. These are all great, but it started to feel flat so a few years ago I started creating a word for the year – PRESENCE, UNAPOLOGETICALLY ME, COURAGE — they were words to guide what I did through the year. They all sounded great but underneath it all these words were sneaky ways for my ego to still hold onto these ego based goals. For example, if courage was my word then I’d say, “oh I must be courageous to hit my financial goal”. The word for the year became my gateway drug for reaching my ego goals. Now let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with setting tangible goals but for me they mostly fed my ego and left me feeling riddled with judgment at the end of the year.
This year I’m throwing all that away, encouraging my clients to do the same and am taking a completely different approach. This year I’m creating BEING goals. What the heck is a being goal and why am I taking this approach this year? I’m so glad you asked. A being goal focuses on your way of being instead of the outcome you're hoping to create. For example, let’s say you want to write a book this year. A tangible goal would be to write a book. A being goal would be to be a writer. At the end of the year you might have written a book, you might have written 365 blog posts or 500 social posts but at the end of the year what matters is that you wrote. You might not have written the book, but you became a writer.
The biggest reasons why I am creating being goals this year and why they’re so much more powerful than the traditional ways of goal-setting are (a) it leaves space for a plan that is better than you could have imagined. Being goals allow you to be more open and creative and (b) there is less room for self-judgment, which means there is more space to accept what is (read: freedom) and (c) it has you focusing on the journey instead of the end-goal, which is what we’re all on this planet for anyway.
So if you’re interested in taking on a being goal this year, here are two questions to help get you started:
What do I want to create?
Who do I have to be to create this (spoiler alert: this is your being goal)?
I would love to hear what your being goals are for this year, so please respond and let me know!
Big love,
Karlie