We start the year thinking and planning goals we want to accomplish, but as the year goes on sometimes our motivation and inspiration fades. It can be so hard to keep working on our goals. Today’s journal prompt is all about writing out affirmations that can help keep our inspiration going! Affirmations are helpful because the more we repeat them to ourselves, the more our brain begins to process it as being true. What we think impacts what we say and what we do. So if we are continually saying or writing out positive affirmations about our goals it will become much easier to start doing things that support our goal.
Journal Prompt
Write out a goal you are working towards. Make sure to add detail as far as when you want to accomplish it and what specifically you are working towards.
Write out three positive affirmations for each prompt below:
Write an affirmation that describes yourself as having already completed the goal. For example “I am healthy and take care of my body and mind.”
Write an affirmation that describes steps you take to make your goal happen. For example “I feed my body foods that are healthy and nourishing.”
Write an affirmation that addresses your ability to accomplish your goal. For example “I am able to create space in my life for my health to thrive.”
We are constantly being told by society how we should look, what we should weigh, and how to have the “ideal” body. Today we will discuss making physical health goals…but not goals that someone else has for you. Today we will reflect on your goals and what’s important to you!
Defining Physical Health
When thinking about self-care for your physical health, this can include anything regarding taking care of your body and it’s biological system. All of us have a unique system and our goals can be unique to what our body needs. Here are some questions to consider when thinking about making goals:
What areas of my health am I wanting to change to take care of my body?
What does my body need to function at it’s best?
For me personally when making physical health goals, I often get overly focused on my weight or my appearance. But I’ve been learning to instead focus on my internal health. Asking myself questions like what would help me manage my multiple sclerosis better? What will help me have more energy? What is a good way to take care of my body’s internal functioning? What makes my body feel good and healthy?
What about your internal health is a priority for you in this season of life?
What are your physical health goals?
Setting Goals
When setting goals it’s important to be specific and have a plan to put your goal into action. Here are some questions to consider:
What actions will I need to take to accomplish my goal?
How will I know if I’m making progress?
What routines can I put in place to support my goals?
Any form of change takes time! Be patient with yourself and remember taking care of our physical health is a life long journey.
Working towards long-term goals is essential to getting to where we want to be. Todays journal prompt is reflecting on the daily activities we are doing now to work toward our long term goals.
Journal Prompt
What is your long term goal?
Why is this goal important to you?
What daily activities can you do to support your long-term goals?
It’s almost the beginning of a new month!! This means it’s a great time to consider new goals we want to work on! This journal prompt is all about reflecting and making plans to meet our monthly goals!
What are three goals I want to work on during the next month?
Why are these goals important to me?
What actions steps will I take to accomplish each goal?
How will I track my progress throughout the month?
I love journals! They can be a great tool for expressing ourselves, working towards our goals, and to reflect on our present moment. Using a budget journal can be a great tool to feel empowered when working towards your financial goals. There are benefits to having a written budget:
Taking time to write down a budget can help you to be more intentional to make your plan your own. When using an app or spreadsheet it could be less personalized to your life and needs.
Writing increases our brain’s neural activity, which can increase our connection to our budget (Olson, 2016).
Writing has a therapeutic affect and can be calming (Olson, 2016). This can allow us to have a positive connection with our budget and financial plan.
It is easy to look through our written budget and to see progress towards goals (The Panther Group, 2019)!
calculator, pen, clipboard and plants on copy space stainless steel desk for symbol of planning green budget, taking finance or business notes or studying accounting, still life header
Features in a Budget Journal
There are certain features that I look for in a budget journal and try to incorporate these when I am making a journal for myself or to sell. These are some of those features:
A Monthly Overview Page: to have a view of all the income and expenses for the month.
A Savings and Debt Tracker: this is helpful to be able to see progress towards goals of saving or paying off debts. This can be empowering to keep working towards your goals!
Spending Tracker: a tracker can help you be more intentional of how to spend your money, to see how your spending actually fits into your budget, and to see patterns in your spending.
Space to Write Goals: writing down our goals is a huge step towards completing them! Writing it down and planning action steps gives you the freedom to work towards your goals with confidence!
An additional feature that I recently put in a new printable budget journal that I made is a Bill Organizer. I was excited to make this because often we have to pay bills to a lot of different companies and may have additional subscriptions and services that are billed monthly. This form can be a great way to organize these payments! Below is a free download from my printable budget journal! Check out this free bill organizer worksheet! You can check out the full budget journal at the link below and the download for the freebie is below that! Would love to know what features you look for in a budget journal or what tools you use for your budget!
Have you ever had a goal that you wanted to accomplish, but it did not end up working because of lack of planning?
Have you ever had a goal that you planned for, but the plan did not work out and it was difficult to find motivation to keep working towards your goal?
I have been in both of these situations and been disappointment when working towards my goals did not go as planned. Having a plan and ongoing inspiration can help us to accomplish our goals. There is a theory that there are four steps to change. These steps are pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action (DiClemente & Norcross, 1992). The preparation stage is when we have accepted the change we would like to make and then taking steps to get ready for taking action. Vision boards and planning are great steps to take to prepare for action!
Making a vision board, whether it is for the new year, a special project, or a new habit, allows us to stay focused on our priorities and stay inspired even when the change is difficult. Any change, new habit, or even new year will have challenges that we did not anticipate or that may decrease our motivation. Because of this a vision board can help us to stay focused and to press forward when parts of the plan have to be tweaked or changed to accomplish our overall goals. We all grow tired and feel overwhelmed at times from making any kind of change. Because of this it can be helpful to have something to look at and to help us to visualize why it is important to keep working towards our goal.
top view image of table with open notebook and the text new mindset new results. success and personal development concept
Types of Vision Boards
There are several ways that you can make a vision board or display your goals in ways that can inspire you and keep you focused on what your priorities are.
Vision board template with space for goals, dreams list, travel plans and inspiration. Collage frames for teens, nursery poster design. Journal page for planning, new year resolutions, white sheet.
You can make a collage of your vision and goals! This can be very fun because you can use whatever stickers, pictures, phrases, and embellishments that inspire you regarding your goals. This is a great way to express your hopes, desired results, and your “why” behind working towards that goal. The inspiration from the collage can spur you forward towards your goal and be a source of comfort to press forward when barriers come up. You can see a small vision board that I made below with a frame from the Dollar Tree. This is my Amazon referral link for the stickers I purchased for the vision board.
You could choose a word to focus on that represents your “why” behind the goal, that describes your desired outcome, or that inspires you towards your goals.
If you are someone who likes to work on a variety of goals, you could write out all of the goals you have for the year. For example, if you were wanting to work on your health, career, relationships, and faith during 2022 then you could write out a reflection on all four topics and what you are hoping to achieve throughout the year.
Example of a word to focus on throughout the year!Small vision board with a frame I got from the Dollar Tree
SMART Goals
Using SMART goals as our foundation can be helpful in allowing us to make plans that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based. After we have made a vision board or other inspirational reflection, we can than break down our goals into specific and measurable steps. This supports us in making changes and allows the change we make to be sustainable.
Example goal:
Specific – I would like to eat more vegetables.
Measurable – I plan to eat 4 servings of vegetables daily.
Achievable – this is a doable goal because it is simple and will take place during my lunch and dinner meals.
Realistic – this is realistic to me because I enjoy vegetables and can fairly easily start eating 4 servings daily.
Time-based – I plan to work on this goal for the next three months.
Summary: My goal is to eat 4 servings of vegetables daily, during my lunch and dinner meals. I will work on this goal for the next three months. This is realistic and achievable due to my enjoyment of vegetables and desire to eat healthier.
Trouble Shooting Your Plan
There are times for all of us that working towards our goals does not go as well as we hoped or planned. For most of us we give up on our New Year’s resolutions by February or we might quit a diet three weeks in. If the methods that you had planned on did not work, do not allow that to dishearten you to give up on your goal! Try adjusting the plan or the methods of how you go about working towards your end goals! Your health, wellbeing, and dreams are worth pursuing!!
cycle to reach success: try, fail, try again, success
References:
DiClemente, C. & Norcross, J. (1992). In Search of How People Change: Applications to Addictive behaviors. American Psychologist, 47, 1102-1114.
I have gone through many seasons where I used tools to track things related to my wellness. Sometimes it’s tracking what I eat, exercise, stress, symptoms, medications, or progress of a goal. When working towards any new habit we have to put our attention towards making changes or choosing ways to support the new way of life. Writing and tracking my new habit on paper has been the most successful way for me to track wellness goals. I am a life long “journaler” and love to use writing as a way to process, to track, and to plan.
Why Use A Health Tracker?
Developing any new habit can be difficult. It takes time for our brain and body to adjust to the new way of living. The best tool to use when working on a new habit is using the tool of attention. So often as we live our life on auto pilot and we revert back to old habits. Because of this starting any new habit means we have to pay attention. Using a health tracker can help bring intentionality to the everyday choices we make about what we eat and how often we exercise. Being intentional and purposeful in our choices allows us to make decisions that supports the goals we are trying to accomplish. A health tracker can be an invaluable tool when planning for your health, tracking aspects of your wellness, and progressing towards your goals.
My Common Mistakes With Health Goals
There are mistakes that I’ve made when using a health tracker and making health goals that have derailed my progress.
Expecting Perfection: there have been times when I planned things out in my health tracker and everything was going well, but then I make a mistake. It could be that I ate that piece of cake or sweet I had been craving, or I didn’t do the exercise I planned for the day, or I got take out instead of eating what I had meal planned. Sometimes when these mistakes happen I would get so discouraged that I would just want to quit and give up on using the health tracker or feel like a failure. DON’T QUIT!!! We are human. We make mistakes and sometimes we just don’t make the best choices, but it’s okay!! Your goal isn’t ruined, you are not a failure, and your hard work is not cancelled out. We all go through this and it’s totally normal. Just make the next right choice. So what, lunch didn’t go as planned, maybe dinner will be better or maybe tomorrow will be better. Just keep going!! Your health is worth it! You are worth it!
Making Vague Goals: I often have these big ideas of things I would like to work on, but I forget to break my big goals into measurable small goals. For example, if you are wanting to lose 100lbs, that’s an awesome goal, but a bit overwhelming. How can you break that into measurable small goals? It could be that you are going to make a goal of losing 1lb per week instead of the big goal. Having small victories makes it easier to work towards our big goals.
Being Obsessed with Weight: There have been times when I’ve been working on being healthy and I get totally consumed by what the scale is saying. There have even been times when loved ones in my life had to hide the scale from me because I was so consumed by the numbers. I have found that I am much more successful when I make goals around behaviors rather than weight. For example, eating 4 servings of vegetables a day, or having only having one sweet treat per month, or exercising four times a week. These kinds of goals work much better for me because weight fluctuates for many reasons.
Health Tracker Features
There a variety of features to look for in a health tracker depending on what your goals are. Here is a walk-through of a health tracker that I created and the features.
These are affiliate links for items I have bought for my health tracker.
Blooming Resilient 