New Year’s Goals - 12 Months… 12 New Skills
In just a few days, (God-willing) we will begin a new year. If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the last couple of weeks assessing 2021, closing out projects you don’t want to take into a new year, decluttering, organizing and the like. It really is amazing how this time of year brings about such a drastic sense of urgency for many of us. Perhaps, I will explore the “why” around that in another post.
One of the most recognized practices at the beginning of a new year is that people make resolutions… these declarations of new habits or behaviors that more often than not go unrealized. I stopped making new year’s resolutions a long time ago and traded the practice for setting realistic and measurable goals instead. In this way I went from pressuring myself to do something, and feeling like a failure if I didn’t, to giving myself the opportunity to try, assess and re-assess at various periods throughout the year to see if I am improving or getting closer to the overall goal. If I’m not, I simply reevaluate to determine why I’m not doing well or if the goal is even important to me anymore. If it’s important and I’m not making progress, I try to make adjustments that will give me better results. If it’s no longer important to me, I simply give myself the freedom to let it go, document any lessons I learned from the try, and move on.
This year, I have several goals that affect varying parts of my life. I will share more about them all over time, but one I’m incredibly excited about is my 12 New Skills goal. I’m setting the goal of learning and studying at least one new skill every month of the year. The minimum is 12 but I’m really hoping it will actually become 24 as I aim to learn one new skill for my personal life and one for my professional life each month. As an example, for the month of January, I’ll be learning how to create and successfully execute Facebook ads. I’m starting with this book to kick off my learning. It’s something I’ve put off for the last couple of years, but learning it is going to prove vital to the success of one my companies. On a personal note, I want to learn how to make sourdough bread from scratch, using my own starter. I love sourdough bread and I love the idea of making it myself. I’ll begin learning with a class on skillshare. While the professional skill is important to me and will add great value to my businesses, the personal goal represents self-care that I have come to value and prioritize. I’m excited!
Are you setting goals for the upcoming year? Share in the comments.
P.S. If you’re interested in trying out a free month of access to SkillShare, click here. I LOVE IT!