In my last post of 2021 I asked my readers the question: What are some of your “themes” that have emerged this year, and what do they tell you about possible directions for your 2022? In my first post of 2022, I shared an example from my life on how I met a goal I’d set for 2021 - the act of inviting more writing and creativity into my life.

Where I want to go this week is to share a couple of ways that I’ve found are helpful within the goal setting process, but first I want to backtrack to the middle of last month.

As part of my work at the University of Calgary, I had the opportunity to complete the 5-day Design Your Life Studio training through Stanford University’s Life Design Lab. One of the areas of learning taught within the lab is the concept of radical collaboration, which is the idea that we can set and work on goals more effectively when we do so collaboratively with other people involved. This brings me to my first point.

Create Your Team: This can be one person or a few, family members, colleagues or friends. Whoever you choose, share the goals you want to work on. Doing this does three things: 1) It gives voice to your intentions – saying what you want out loud gives it power; 2) It helps create accountability in that other people know what you want to work on, and can help you do so, which brings me to; 3) Often, people in our lives will have ideas about how we can meet the goals we set, and vice versa. In creating a team, you create collective support – they help you, and you help them.

Now, let’s talk about the elephant that tends to hang out in the room anytime setting goals enters the conversation. For many of us, thinking about goal setting and making changes in our life (especially two years into a pandemic!) can be daunting and anxiety inducing. This brings me to a great tip from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the authors of Designing Your Life.

Set Small Goals: In Designing Your New Work Life Burnett and Evans (2021) write that there are “some pretty sound psychological studies and behavior change models that suggest taking small, actionable steps is the best way to establish a new behavior or habit” (p. 30). This is something I very much resonate with and restarting this blog last January provides a great example.

I published my first blog story on January 4, 2021 (Small Goal #1). Next, I published my second blog story a week later (Small Goal #2). I figured out when during the week I had the most time and energy to write (Small Goal #3), and when best to post weekly content to social media (Small Goal #4). The more I got into a routine of writing, when to post, and the way inspiration for blog stories strikes all around me, the more second nature it became. And now here we are at the start of my second year of blogging and the 50th #WhatsYourSparkBlog story.

Now, this is the process that worked for me. As you think about your goals, think about what process will work best for you.

And so, the two questions I leave you with this week are:
    • Who do you want to be part of your team?
    • How can you work on your goals in small steps, in ways that are realistic, manageable and most authentic to who you are?

Coming Up on Next Week’s #WhatsYourSparkBlog
Keeping with the theme of setting goals, in next week’s post my dear friend and colleague Carllie Necker writes about the process of art journaling, and how she’s used this creative medium to help set both intentions and her words of the year for 2022.