Personal Goals for 2017

Last year I had financial goals and miscellaneous goals… This year I’ve decided to rename the miscellaneous goals to personal goals… But the content of them hasn’t really changed much.

2017 Personal Goals

I’m always wanting to improve myself in all aspects, as I hope is evident from the name of my blog, but we aren’t really capable of concentrating on too many things at once, so it is better to focus on one or two things at a time and really get a hold on them before moving on to the next thing… I tried to keep that in mind when I was making my personal goals for this coming year.

Goal #1: Visit with Friends & Family at least 2 Times per Month

This is copied over from last year, but I combined the two goals this time mostly because they are so related and I didn’t feel the need to separate them.  The idea is that I make an effort to visit with friends and family outside of the usual big events.  I wrote a post back in November about my friends and discussed Cait’s post about intentional relationships.  I really want to focus on improving my relationships by giving myself to them wholeheartedly.  I also made a comment when I reviewed my goals from last year, that I felt like I’d go through phases with different friends, and while I know that is perfectly natural, I want to make an effort to keep the time between contact with all my friends less.  In other words, I want to make sure that I at least keep in touch with everyone on a regular basis, even if we can’t coordinate an actual visit.

Goal #2: Read 12 Books (1 per Month)

This one is simply copied over from last year.  I want to try again.  Last year I only got a total of 4 books completed.  However, I started a lot of different books, so if I concentrate on finishing up some of those books, I should have a pretty good head start.  The intention of this goal is to help me grow as a person.  And also to cut down on the amount of time I spend watching TV.

Goal #3: Run 1000 km in 2017

I’m always trying to get and stay in shape.  It’s a constant struggle with my natural lazy tendencies.  Last year, when I started with my goal of running 5 races (I only ended up running in 2), I mentioned that I had signed up for a challenge on MapMyRun to run 1000 km in 2016.  This year, they have a similar challenge to run 1017 km in 2017.  I am not worried about the extra 17, I’m just going for 1000 km.  So far, I have run 3.5 km (hiking doesn’t count), so I’m already behind, but I think I can make it up.  If I run 20km per week for the next 50 weeks, I can make 1000 km in 2017.  I’ll keep you updated.

 

 

Goal #4: Complete 1 Monthly Focus each Month

This sounds vague, and that’s sort of because I want this to be open to change throughout the year as my life progresses and changes.  As I mentioned already, it is really hard for us as people to make too many changes at once.  So instead, I want to take a specific task or habit each month and focus on it.  Maybe this is sort of my version of the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin… Except that I am not defining my focus for each month ahead of time…  In any case, for January I am going to concentrate on my mornings. (And yes, this is another way I am once again copying Cait Flanders, but I swear I was going to do this before she posted about it!)  I’ll discuss the details in another post.

Goal #5: Complete 1 Monthly Challenge each Month

Similar to goal #4, this goal has been left purposefully vague and open so that I can be free to change it up each month based on what is going on in my life.  In the fall I did this 30 day 30 push-up challenge with some friends, and I have to admit that, even though I didn’t exactly complete it fully, I had a lot of fun and the challenge helped me actually do some push-ups.  I’ve also had some relative success in the past with my fitness challenges, so I might do a couple more of those throughout the year, but I’m not going to limit myself to fitness… I might do some bullet journal related challenges, or try out something new and artsy, like calligraphy or drawing, or I might try again to complete a decluttering challenge…   For January, I decided that I wanted to finally play the 30 day Minimalism Game.  I’ll do an update on what I’ve gotten rid of so far very soon.

Do you have any personal goals for 2017?  Do you want to join me in any of mine?