How to set goals for 2021 and achieve them. Make this THE YEAR you change your life. — erin may henry

PART ONE: SETTING GOALS FOR 2021

Start With a Theme

The first thing that I like to do when I’m setting goals for the new year is to develop a theme for the entire year. 

How do you want to feel at the end of the year? 

What is the big focus that you would like to have for yourself and your life for the new year?

For me, for 2021, I have chosen the theme of party. 

I am a very extroverted person so, naturally, this year was challenging for me in terms of being disconnected from the things that I love to do and the people that I love to see. 

I realized that I love to just enjoy my life. I personally believe that life should be enjoyed, that every day should feel like a party. And so my theme for the year is really party. 

How can I make every day feel like fun and joy, and like, life is a dance floor? 

Maybe for you, you want your year to be focused around health or community growth or challenging yourself, or as Yes Theory says “seeking discomfort”. 

What’s that overall theme that you would like to create for your year? 

Once you have a theme, start to brainstorm heaps of ways in which you can actually bring that theme to life. A lot of people set a theme for the year and then they just forget about it because, naturally, life gets in the way. But if you set yourself up for success by brainstorming a big list of all the ways in which you can make your life feel like a party or seek discomfort or challenge yourself with growth or focus on health, then you’ve almost got a blueprint backup plan for any time you start to feel a little stagnant or uninspired. You can retract back to that list that you created and get yourself back on track towards bringing your theme to life. 

For example, yesterday, I found myself getting a little uninspired, and one of the things on my list was have a spontaneous dance party. And so in the afternoon, rather than sitting around and scrolling on social media, I had a spontaneous dance party. And, today, I feel so much more inspired than I would have if I had ended up just scrolling all afternoon.

This blueprinted list that is in pursuit of your theme for the year is going to help you fill those gaps and get back to feeling motivated.

Set 2-3 Big Goals That Will Make You Feel Happy and Proud to Achieve

I want you to ask yourself:

What at the end of 2021 is going to make me feel the happiest and fulfilled? 

What at the end of 2021 is going to make me feel the proudest? 

Are you just chasing society’s definition of success or are you truly following what intuitively is going to make you feel proud and fulfilled?

I sat down and I really spent some time on this. What are 2-3 things that, by the end of 2021 if I have either achieved or worked on achieving, would make me feel happy, fulfilled, and proud? 

For me, it was actually to:

1. Double my income or the income that I made this year so that I can invest in more properties, take my parents or more holidays, host free events for my membership. And I would feel really happy and fulfilled if I made the money, but also if I was able to accomplish those things because of the money. 

2. Fight in a Muay Thai fight. So there’s a lot of health focuses and goals that I would have to achieve around that thing. But by the end of the year, I would feel ultra happy and really proud of myself if I took that action. 

So, rather than inundating yourself with a whole laundry list of things that you need to do and accomplish in order to feel successful, in 2021, decide 2-3 things that will leave you feeling really, really proud.

Make a List of All the Other Cool Stuff You Could Do.

There are going to be alternate areas of your life that you’ll still want to progress and grow in, so just make a list. Make a list of all the things that would be nice to do in 2021. 

So you’re going to have two lists: 

1. A list with two to three goals that you’re really going to push yourself to grow and to focus on. Write them on your wall, really have them at the forefront of what you’re striving to achieve in the new year. 

2. And a “would be nice” list. What this does is it allows you to still have other goals that you can focus on without having the deep pressure of “success”. Things like trying a new hobby, travel to a new place, make more friends, get your health in shape, eat like this, workout like that. All of the “would be nice” things that you could do and that you could work on, but they’re not those big things that are ultimately going to make you feel like the year was a success.

PART TWO: HOW TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

Figure Out What Has Helped YOU Achieve Your Goals in the Past

It’s really easy for me and any other YouTube to sit here and say, these are all the best practices for taking action for goal achievement, for improving your life, for personal development…But the reality is every single human being is different. This is why we float from video to video, to video, trying to find a strategy that fits us.

What I want you to think about instead of me sitting here and telling you a bunch of different strategies that you can do in order to achieve your goals. What I want you to sit down and think about is:

What have I done in the past to achieve my goals? 

What I want you to do is really think about anything that you’ve had as a goal in the past that you have actually achieved, whether that be graduating school, or whether that be raising a child, moving to a different country, health and fitness goals, relationship goals, or any area of life that you really have succeeded in. I want you to think about what were the supporting factors to that success? I want you to make a list of things. 

What is it that you were ultra-organized? 

Was it that you had accountability? 

Was it that you had a great incentive?

What helps you achieve your goals? Because it’s different for everyone. Some people need discipline, some people need an incentive. I need to enjoy the action that I take. 

What is it specifically for you that makes you take action?

Make An Action Plan

Once you have actually started to think about what those things are, now comes the time when you actually make an action plan. 

Once you’ve actually got that big goal or those two to three big goals that you’d like to achieve in the year, you have to sit down and make an action plan for how you’re going to do that. 

Now, of course, there’s always room for magic, specifically when it comes to audience growth or making money online, the two big things that we talk about here, but fail to plan, plan to fail. 

You want to actually think about what you can do in order to achieve these goals and then make a specific action plan for that. Put it in your calendar, put it in your Asana. Make the investments that you need to make. Buy the books. Just get yourself set up now for the action that you’re going to take in order to achieve those goals. 

The thing that is going to make the biggest difference, the thing that makes this post different from every other post on goals is if you actually sit down and figure out what you have done in the past to actually be successful. What have you personally done in the past in order to actually achieve your goals? When you know that you will unlock the secret to being able to achieve anything you want to do in the future.