This post may include affiliate links and I will receive a small commission if you click one. This is at no extra cost to you and allows this site to keep running.
I always liked the idea of setting goals or some kind of resolutions for the new year. While it is true that the beginning of the year shouldn’t be the only time you seek changes or improvements in your life, there is something nice about setting goals for the new year. It feels like we are starting fresh once again, wiping the plate clean and starting again.
So that is why I always tried to set some kind of personal and blogging goals with every start of the new year. However, as the years went by, I became less driven by my goals. They didn’t feel motivating but rather exhausting and became a sign of disappointment once I had realized that I failed to complete the majority of them once again.
If we look back at my 2018 goals, I only completed the ones related to travels and personal growth. While it is not
I am huge believer that if something works for others but doesn’t work for you, you shouldn’t push it. This is why I am giving up on a regular goal setting for the new year and instead I am choosing a focus word that will guide me through the year. This word will lead me in 2019 and hopefully will set me some mini goals along the way that I will complete without making me feel like I failed somehow at the end of the year.
Initially, if I won’t achieve the focus word in some life situations, it won’t weight me down because I will know I did good in other aspects. Also, I won’t have a strict set goals, so there is no way I can fail my list of goals and feel disappointed once again. Does that make sense? To make it more clear, let me give you an example.
If your focus word is ‘create’, you will most likely seek to live the year filled with creative projects, more exploration and fun in your everyday life. So even if you will have only one project made at the end of the year, you will still feel a sense of accomplishment because you fulfilled your focus word. It will feel much more motivating for you because you don’t need to think and stress every single day about your goal of let’s say ‘make 3 projects’. I hope that makes sense…
So what is my focus word for 2019?
Simplify.
I’ve been trying to do a lot of things and projects related to my blog and personal life during the past years and even though I managed to achieve quite a bit, I feel like I spread myself too thin. I am doing too many things and nothing at the same time. It has come to this point in my life
To make the word ‘simplify’ work for me, I turned to a good old dictionary and checked the definition of the word: to make something less complicated and therefore easier to do or understand.
That is what I aspire to do in 2019. Here are some of the aspects of life to which I want to apply my focus word or at least try to:
I want to simplify my finances. At the moment, my financial life, or more like a lack of it, is a big mess. I spend too much, I forget to save a bit and I simply just roll with it without giving my bank account any thought. That’s so not a way to go if I want to have a stable financial situation. I have already started tracking my expenses and income which hopefully will make me more responsible with money.
I want to simplify my environment. I am a huge hoarder and it shows when you take a look at my room. I collect and save all kinds of things that I probably won’t even use in the future and my work environment is a mess as well. So as 2019 rolls, I will hopefully slowly declutter everything that surrounds me from documents to beauty products.
I want to simplify blogging. I recently have started re-reading “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert and it made me realize how much my relationship with blogging has changed. It became less of a hobby and more of a job for me. While there is nothing bad with it, it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I might even write a separate article about it in the future as I have so much to say but for now, just know that I want to go back to basics (to make it simple).
There is so much more I want to simplify and make more clear for me this year but as I said I want my focus word to lead me through-out the year instead of setting some hard goals that I probably won’t even reach. At the moment, all of this seems very much exciting to me and I can’t wait to see how 2019 will turn out. I will make sure to share some bits and pieces of my journey of simplifying over social media and maybe even write an article or two. Do let me know if you’d like to read more about it.
Have you set yourself some goals for 2019?
Do you have a focus word? Let’s chat. x