October 2017 Goals

A new month means a new time to reflect and create goals that you want to smash for the month!  Setting goals is essential for figuring out how your life to look.  Without a plan in place, how will we know we are going in the right direction?

Now, there are many, many, many techniques of goal setting.  One that I have talked about before is SMART goals.  Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals are one way of figuring out what you want, how you want to get there, and knowing when you reached it.  A new way that I have recently learned came from Chalene Johnson.  She wrote a book called Push, and it details how and why you want to create what she calls Push Goals.  Within the past year, she (and her team) have created Smart Life Push Journals.  I have been using them for awhile now, and I love them.  I wrote about this journal and a bullet journal and if you would like to read (or reread) it, you can click here.

In that post, I mentioned that I did not see the need for me to use her system, except for the fact that it taught me how to really assess my life, and create goals based on those needs.  I did put this journal away for a little bit, but have recently re-emerged it (is that a word?), to use again.  I actually have incorporated both a bullet journal and the Smart Life Push Journal (push journal for short) in my weekly and daily planning.

Because this is a new month, I am starting a new Push Journal, which made me come up with this idea for a post. Every month, I am going to post my top 5 goals that I want to accomplish over the next 30 (or 31 – one time 28) days.  I urge you to assess what is going on with your life and come up with 5 goals that you want to accomplish over the next month.  And, feel free to share it with me on any of my social media accounts!

I start by rating each of these categories from 1-10, with 10 being the best that it can get.  Then, I will choose the lowest 2 categories to focus on.  *Please note, selecting the categories does not necessarily mean they are the most important to you, it simply means it's the area you want to focus on and prioritize your time for.  Here are the categories: Physical Health, Mental Wellbeing, Environment/Surroundings, Hobbies/Joys/Restoration, Romance, Friends and Family, Finances, Purpose or Career, Spirituality, and Personal Growth.

Based on how I ranked these categories, the top category that I want to focus on is my finances.  Now, I came up with 10 goals that I want to accomplish over the next 90 days and an 11th goal that is called my “Push Goal” (Push Journal system).  I’m not going to explain everything  in this post.  If you want to learn more, you can purchase Chalene Johnson’s book Push from Amazon, or head over to her website at www.pushjournal.com.

When I switched careers to work for MetroHealth Medical Center in research, I also took a pay cut.  Kind of a big pay cut.  I thought it was what was best for me and my life.  This is the work that I wanted to do.  (I can write more about that later.  This is not the time for it.)  So, I wanted to really get this blog going and learn how to make money from it.  I know it’s possible as there are many success stories.  I’m still working on it.  So, you will notice in my goals, that finances are driving my motivation this month.  I’m not going to share with you all 11 of my goals.  I’ll give you 5 of the most important ones that I will be focusing on.

My October 2017 Goals:
  1. Spend 3-4 hours daily on learning and implementing strategies to promote personal and professional growth. #BestMeEver
  2. I will monetize my blog by adding affiliate link/posts as well as creating a product that will help people.
  3. I will eliminate (or at least severely cut down) on unneeded expenses and stick to a budget.  (ah hem, Starbucks runs anyone?!)
  4. I will learn and implement a program to build my faith and practice meditation.
  5. I will initiate conversations with at least 3 new people.

Even though I am focusing on my finances, I still want to work on building my faith and my confidence in myself.  So, there are 5 of my goals for the month of October.  I challenge you to come up with even 1 or 2 goals to work on and smash by the end of the month!  And, like I mentioned before, feel free to share it with me or with a friend or family member!!

Happy Goal Setting!  Let’s Grow & Grind!

*Disclosure: There are some affiliate links below, but these are all products I highly recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used. See my full disclosure statement here.