If you have listened to my podcast or followed me for any amount of time you know that I love setting goals and I am really intentional about reaching my goals! When I sit down before New Years, I write out one word that I want to focus on for the next year and write my goals around that word, then I jump into the year working hard to achieve those goals. But – here is the big secret – I don’t forget about them throughout the year! I think it’s really easy to abandon your goals and your intent for the New Year once it’s not the New Year anymore. It’s easy to not think about it again until the next New Year comes around and everyone starts to get reflective again. We fall into this pattern of life really happening and goals are forgotten. The difference between people who actually reach goals and people who just set resolutions is how often they come back to their goals to check in on them and how often they reflect on what their intention and purpose was for the year. So, by revisiting your goals throughout the year, you are setting a pace for yourself to actually achieve your goals and be intentional with your focus for the year.
In This Episode, Allie Discusses:
The importance of setting intention and purpose to your goals.
How revisiting your New Year’s Goals throughout the year will help you achieve your goals and become an action taker.
Ways to make decisions throughout the year that help you focus on your intent and purpose for the year.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Allie’s Courses
I wan to help you refocus on your goals, which is why I created this FREE guide to checking in on your goals! It’s really like journal prompts, thought prompts, and heart prompts that will help you reflect and ask yourself important questions. I want you to take action on achieving your goals this year! It’s so important. You’re going to know who you are, where you’re at, where you want to go, and exactly what steps you’re going to take to get yourself there. That’s really, really powerful!
Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to. I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days. I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it. Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and I know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.
_______________________________________________________________
Hey, beautiful! I want to talk to you today about something that I think is kind of unique. It’s something that I do in my personal life. It’s actually something that I’m passionate about.
It’s coming back to what your goal, your word, or your intent was for the year you’re currently living back in January when New Years was coming around and you were setting your goals, making resolutions. Coming back to that halfway through the year, and actually multiple times throughout the year, and checking in and asking yourself, where am I at? Am I living that out? Did I forget about it? What can I do to get back on track and get intentional with where I wanted to take myself this year? I think it’s really, really important to do that.
This is the difference between people who actually reach goals and people who just set resolutions because they have “fresh start syndrome” and everyone else is doing it around New Years. But then they walk away, head back into their norm and they never really change anything or get anywhere that they want to go.
So, at the end of every year – and it’s actually my favorite time of year, the week after Christmas – I think the world gets weird and antsy at that week. It’s kind of a weird, no-man’s land. It’s not the holidays anymore, but it’s also not the New Year yet. It’s actually one of my favorite weeks of the year, if not my absolute favorite week of the year. I love the day after Christmas because my family and I keep it low key. We purge a bunch of stuff because the kids just got toys from relatives for Christmas so we let go of a bunch of old toys.
The kids are super willing to let go of things because they just got new stuff. I’ve talked about that before. That’s the best day of the year to purge. (And side note, I always have a big sale on my course that day to help you purge.) But anyway, it’s just a really great day to let go and prune back what’s unnecessary. To make space for all the new stuff you got physically and also make space in your heart for the new coming year.
I love the last week of the year. I get very reflective and I look back at the year I am wrapping up. I look at the decisions that I made, the person that I became because every year brings you into a new season.
It brings you into a new piece of the person that you are. I would get my journal out and be very reflective. I get really prayerful. I look ahead at the coming year. I dig deep and find where do I want to go this next year? What were the problems with this year? What were the triumphs of this year? And I ask the Lord, “Where do you want to take me? “What do you want me to focus on this year?” And He always helps me come up with a word or an intent for the coming new year.
It’s just my favorite time. It’s a really sweet week for me. I always feel extra close to God and really centered and confident in who I am as a person and in where I’m going.
I love a good, fresh start as much as the next person. But I really like to get intentional with this time of year.
Instead of setting resolutions, I usually pick something that I want to focus on. And that was “enjoy.” I really had it on my heart that the Lord really wanted me to rest and relax after a year and a half of working my butt off, hustling hard to grow my business and make it what it is today. It was time to sit back and let myself be restored, quiet that hustle a little bit, and just enjoy what I had built. Enjoy my family more. Enjoy all the people that I hired. Enjoy the fact that I created jobs for people, for moms who can now stay home with their kids. Enjoy the fact that I’m homeschooling my kids. Just enjoy the life that I have been given.
And so, that was something that I set, and headed into 2018 focusing on.
I think it’s really, really easy to abandon your goals and your intent for the New Year once it’s not the New Year anymore. It’s easy to not think about it again until the next New Year comes around and everyone starts to get reflective again. You catch that bug and think, “Okay, what happened this year and what do I want to do next year?”
You fall into this pattern of life really happening to you, your year happening to you. Then after it’s happened to you and all is said and done, you look back at it from a standpoint of a lack of control and you’re like, “Okay, what do I want for this year?”
You have this grip of control over the coming year because it hasn’t happened yet. Life is chaotic and crazy and life happens. Things out of your control take place.
And, of course, I totally get that. But I really want to live my life on purpose. I really want to live an intentional life of trust in the Lord, but also of not being a person who sits back and let things happen to her.
So, I like to come at my year with a sense of purpose and intent, not a control-freakness where I’ve got this tight grip on my life and I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, I have to make sure I have a say in every single thing that happens.” I’m actually really a mellow person, but I’m just intentional.
I don’t want you to confuse intent with controlling.
Anyway, I’ll do this multiple times throughout the year, but especially over the summer. It’s the halfway point of the year and I get pretty reflective and prayerful again, a little bit extra and more intentional in the summer.
I’ll circle back to what my intent was at the beginning of the year and ask myself, “Where am I? Is there anything that I’m doing that doesn’t align with what I wanted? With what I know that God put on my heart, with what I know my focus was supposed to be for this year?”
Then I’ll journal it out a little bit and pray through it for a week or two and be thinking and looking at my life extra closely. What’s on my calendar? What’s on my task list? What’s in my Trello boards? What’s going on in my life? Our homeschool? In my business? What’s on my calendar? What am I spending my time on? Putting it under the microscope of my intent at the beginning of the year and asking myself, “Is this enjoying? Is this purposeful? Is this aligned with what I am supposed to be focusing on this year?”
Then I’ll make decisions. Now, I’m going to give you some examples from recently as I’ve done this halfway through my year, but just know they are a little bit, I don’t know, intense and it’s not normally like this.
Usually there’s just things like what I noticed that I really wanted to focus on, like cultivating more joy in my life. “I never hang out with my best friend and I miss our regular coffee dates. I’m going to text her and see if we can set up a regular coffee date again because I’m really not being intentional with my friendship with her, and that brings me a lot of joy and really fills my life with happiness and I want to do that.”
There’ll be little things like that. But this year I actually had quite a few things that I felt like this isn’t really serving me. It’s not things that I really started up this year, but just things that were a normal part of my life, maybe from the year before, that I noticed, you know what, these are really sucking my energy, draining me and making me not able to live the intent that I had for this year and it’s really on my heart to let these things go.
Usually there are things that will let other people down a little bit, or maybe make you afraid of what people will say or think. Or disappoint somebody. Or it may be even scary for you to let go of because they’ve been a part of your life for so long. Or you’ve attached your identity to these things.
For example, maybe you are really feeling led to homeschool, but you don’t know anything about homeschooling. Your kids are in 5th and 3rd grade. They’re older and you have no idea how to do this. They’ve been in school their entire lives, and so making that decision can be terrifying honestly.
I think you’re getting intentional. Again, you’re circling back to what your intent was. Asking yourself, looking at your life and your calendar through this lens is really powerful.
_______________________________________________________________
When you buy something, you buy it with your time. With minutes from your life. Not just with your money. Studies show us that less clutter equals less stress and more time. It is really as simple as that.
This was the founding reason that I created Your Uncluttered Home. It has become my most popular, globally-praised, decluttering course that I designed for moms who want to live their lives more than they want to clean up after it.
It is truly the A-Z of minimalism. Every room. Every area. Every nook and cranny of your house totally uncluttered. This super extensive, extremely detailed course is literally everything you need to become a minimalist momma who is able to be a lot more present for what matters most.
To learn more about the course, go to alliecasazza.com/allcourses.
This really is the short-cut version. The exact journey that I took as a mom, 5-6 years ago, that got me to this point of an uncluttered, minimalistic motherhood where I am spending the least amount of time on my house every day.
Motherhood is just way too sweet a time to be spent struggling so hard and living in survival mode day in and day out. Our stuff is really the cause of that.
If you want to start this lifestyle, if you want to simplify your life… I believe that it all starts at home.
Simplify your life. alliecasazza.com/allcourses.
_______________________________________________________________
So, getting back to more of a personal version of this example is my word for the year was “enjoy” and I started to look at what was on my calendar, my work list, what I’ve been spending my time on and one thing really popped out at me. That was The Purpose Society. So, The Purpose Society is a monthly membership community that I started last year in August. It was something that I’d wanted to do for a really long time. It actually took me a while to get it up. It took a lot of planning, a lot of time and energy, some money to start up. I really poured my heart into it.
I actually really enjoyed The Society. It’s not something that I ever felt like, “Whoa! I really don’t like this. I really want to cut it off.” But as I was reflecting, as I was praying, giving my life and my schedule over to the Lord in prayer and asking Him, “What is not aligning with “enjoying” this season of my life?”
Because as a believer, I really believe that God puts certain intents, and certain words, and goals on my heart at the beginning of the year because He knows what’s going to come this year. He knows what’s going to come next year. He knows what happened last year. He knows what my soul needs this year.
It’s really important to stay with that intent and not abandon it because you forgot, because it’s no longer a New Year. So, I know the word “enjoy” was imprinted on my heart so deeply. I know that that’s what He gave me. I know that it’s important for me to stay there.
So, The Purpose Society jumped out at me and I was just praying and journaling through it and I realized The Purpose Society is the lowest branch of income in the business. It really doesn’t do much compared to the rest of my business. It is the most time and energy consuming branch of the business. I also noticed that I would pour things into The Purpose Society and then, in turn, would not be able to pour into the rest of my business. It was just really depleting me.
It also didn’t seem like a really wise business decision either. I found myself just really pouring a lot of time into it, really feeling drained. I know that we’re going to be adopting either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, depending on when things finalize. And I just felt like I really need to clear my plate. The Purpose Society really jumped out at me as something that would maybe need to be pruned.
So, after I prayed about it – I actually ended up praying about it for about a month – I really felt sure this is a decision that I need to make. I knew that I would be letting down about a thousand people. It was going to be hard. I don’t like to disappoint people. I also have a hard time admitting failure or defeat. And for some reason, this felt like that to me even though it’s not.
I really had a hard time saying that this is what I was going to do, that this was a problem for me and that it wasn’t in line with my purpose and my intent, and it was really feeling like something that I needed to let go of.
It actually went really, really well. Super smooth. Everybody understood and everyone was so kind to me. It was really, really well received.
As soon as it was let go, (which was really recent, it was just last month) I felt it. I felt like “Yes, total peace. This was a good decision.” I had so much extra time every week. Over the course of each month now I have so much more time and I’m able to really enjoy every aspect of my business.
I have more time to enjoy my family. I have less on my to-do list. I set myself free and I got so much time back. It was a really good decision.
Another decision that I made through my mid-year reflection was to take June off of work completely. There were a couple of appointments I couldn’t move, but starting June 5th, I took over three weeks, almost the entire month, off of June. That was hard for me to do because my work doesn’t feel like work to me. I love what I do. I love who I serve. I love you guys. I love being involved with you. I love creating content. Coming up with episode ideas, writing blog posts. Coming up with video ideas with my husband. I love what I do, but I need a break every now and then.
I realized that I had been working pretty relentlessly for about 19, 20 months without a break at all and that’s not good. That’s not intentional. And so, I realized I really needed to make some time for some time off. I scheduled three weeks off of work completely and it was so soul-fulfilling for me. It was so good and I really needed it.
Another thing that I’ll do when revisiting my goals for the year is simplifying what I’m aiming for for the year.
This is a really personal episode, so I hope it’s not seeming narcissistic that I’m talking about myself, but that’s all I can really pull from because I only know what my intent for the year was. I don’t know what yours is. You can take what I’m saying and apply it to your own life, of course.
There were a lot of goals that I had for this year that I realized were great. They would be so productive. They would be so good. They would make my audience thrilled to have all these amazing new things from me. But, they wouldn’t really allow me to enjoy the year, enjoy my family and enjoy my business.
It would be more like last year – lots of hustle, lots of work, lots of breaking things out and going crazy, being really busy and really full. And so, I let go of some things that were hard for me to let go of.
There was a course that I wanted to create that I put away till next year. I could do it and I would enjoy it, but it wouldn’t let me enjoy my family as much and it would really cram my schedule full. So, I let it go. There were a lot of things like that.
Revisit your goals for the year. The goals that you’ve created in the last 5, 6 or 7 months – do they reflect what your original intent was? What you knew in your heart you needed to focus on this year? Kind of revisiting that, pruning those. Letting go of things, even if they’re good things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re good for you right now.
Also taking a look at what’s obligatory? Is there anything obligatory that’s on your calendar all the time that you’re doing on a regular basis that’s just not serving you? It’s not about being selfish and creating a life that’s so fun all the time. I believe we’re here to serve other people. That’s my entire business.
There’s a difference between serving other people and loving on them and being a good human being and just running yourself ragged doing things for other people. Constantly volunteering for things and signing up for things, ignoring your family because you’re giving so much that you’re just exhausted all the time.
Take a look at how you’re spending your time and ask yourself, “Does this reflect the intent I had for this year? Is this where I want to be halfway through this year? Is this where I wanted to go?” Again, intentionally looking is the difference between people who actually reach goals and people who just set resolutions from “fresh start syndrome” and then walk away and head back into their normalcy.
I created something that will help you guys do this for yourselves because we are about halfway through the year still and you can totally do this. You can do this at any time.
Like I said, I do this several times a year, but at the very least once halfway through, usually I do it every quarter if I’m really being intentional and really on top of it. But you know, it just depends on what’s going on that year and the season of life that I’m in.
But we’re about halfway through the year right now and I created a worksheet. It’s really like journal prompts, thought prompts, heart prompts, I guess, that will help you reflect and ask yourself important questions like, “What was my intent for this year in January? How have I kept with that? How have I strayed from it? What’s going on in my life that doesn’t reflect this goal? How can I get back to where I want to be?” All those types of things and it really helps you work through things.
There’s space for you to type or write. You can do this on your computer or you can print it out and fill it out, pen and paper style. It’s really helpful. I’ve been doing this for years and I know what questions you need to ask yourselves to get intentional in this way.
So you can download that in the show notes, which would be alliecasazza.com/shownotes/54. Go get that. It’s totally free. It’s on there and it’ll really help you because I want you to take action on this. It’s so important. You’re really going to see a difference in yourself. You’re going to know who you are, where you’re at, where you want to go, and exactly what steps you’re going to take to get yourself there. That’s really, really powerful!
_______________________________________________________________
This was an episode of The Purpose Show. Did you know there is an exclusive community created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions surrounding The Purpose Show episodes? And to get you to actually take action and make positive changes on the things that you learn here? Go be a part of it. To join go to facebook.com/groups/purposefulmamas.
Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, and get step-by-step help from me, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, courses, classes, and ways to learn more about what the next step might look like for you and to focus on whatever you might need help with in whatever season you are in right now.
I am always rooting for you, friend!
See ya next time!
Hey mama! Just a quick note, this post may contain affiliate links.
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment