The Must-Have Checklist For Your Goals
The end of March marks the first quarter of 2024. Personally, this year has already had its set of challenges, and I’m hoping that in the second quarter I will finally feel like I can start the year.
Despite the challenges you or I have faced thus far, living a rich, abundant and wild life means living in spite of those challenges. But how do you stay on track when things go awry?
Habits are successfully formed when you track and evaluate your progress and adjust accordingly. The vision and intentions you set for yourself in January are the changes you wanted to bring into your life this year. Change requires mindful attention to fire new neurons in the brain that turn habits into default behavior. Checking in a few times throughout the year will ensure your vision and intentions stay on track.
The end of a quarter, or every three months, is a great time to evaluate where you are on the journey you set for yourself. It provides enough time to create movement, but allows room to make adjustments before you are completely derailed.
I’ve created a reflection checklist for you as I have always been a fan of checklists. Not only are they a visual representation of your progress, they help you streamline your process making you more efficient. This checklist is guide for you to find out where you are right now. Take some time, thirty minutes to an hour, and find a quiet space to work through this list.
Review your intentions, word of the year and/or vision board - Hopefully you have these in a place that you look at often, but if not, pull them out, take a few minutes reading them over or looking at your images. Bring to mind why you made your choices. Then ask yourself the following questions.
How have your intentions, word of the year, or vision board guided you the past three months?
What has been the biggest time waster?
What have you embraced the past three months?
What evidence do you have that you are making progress on your intentions?
Where do you need to readjust?
(RE)Create doable steps - After reflection you may find that you need to make adjustments either in your schedule or in the intentions and visions themselves. The beauty of intentions is that they are fluid. You are allowed to change them if they no longer serve how you want to feel and show up in your life. Spend the next few moments making a list of adjustments or creating new ideas of how to put your intentions into action.
Update your schedule - The biggest reason we go astray is because our plans don’t really fit into our schedule. It happens, which is why a quarter check in is effective. It allows you get back on track without losing too much time. Once you’ve made your readjustments, comb through your schedule and find pockets of time to fit in what you want. If you want to sit in stillness every morning, but find you can’t get out of bed ten minutes earlier, perhaps you do it over your lunch hour before you eat. The only rule here is you do you. Don’t use anyone else’s measuring stick. Creatively do what works for you.
Find (and use) a habit tracker - Those that find the most success pay attention to their process, and the simplest way to do that is through a habit tracker. Either a hard copy - download mine here - or electronic versions help you make meaningful change.
Stay inspired - Energy flows where attention goes. Meaning, if you surround yourself with books, art, podcasts, and influences that align with what you want, you are more likely to get what you want because your focus is the same. Have you ever thought about someone you haven’t talked to in a while and then all of a sudden you hear from them? That is the magic of the universe that is energy. When you focus on the good, the good is returned to you.
While the universe does work in your favor it is up to you to make sure you are looking in the right direction. Using this checklist will help you refocus when you are veering off course and lead you right to your RAW life.