I love snowy afternoons. When I can stay inside.
Around this time I start getting excited to garden. Having seasonal affective disorder means February is often the hardest month to get through, so, it’s the best time to have something to be excited for. This year I’m trying something new with my gardens.
I’ve lived in my current house for 6 years. Every year I get a little better at planning how to grow my own food. But every year I still seem to come up short in the “I grew this whole meal myself” ideal.
This year I’m setting goals.
Let’s talk about where people fall short on goal setting before we walk through the goals I’m setting for my gardens.
January sees a boom in gym registrations, in “new year new you” articles, in grandiose ideas of how to be better than you were last year. And by the end of February – who’s still at the gym? I recently invested in this great planner. (I’m addicted to planning. I may write a separate post about using planning as procrastination, or the hypocrisy of relying on pretty pads of paper to achieve sustainability, but for now we’ll call a spade a spade.) It’s called the “Self Journal” published by *this company. The thing I love about it so far is it helps me break down my goals into tasks. Which is where most people fall short when setting goals. We make them, we get excited about them, we fail to create roadmaps to achieve them. This post is about that.
How do you create a roadmap? First you need to know exactly where you’re going.
SMART Goals
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. If you’re not creating goals that hit these parameters you’re setting yourself up for not achieving them. This is a business standard, and I’m not sure why it took me 30 years to apply it to life, but maybe it’s cause it’s not taught in school that I remember? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention? Maybe it was invented last year? (It wasn’t.)
My ultimate goal is to live here.
However, I don’t. But this gives me a pretty good idea of where I want to go. (Somewhere in the french countryside apparently.) It helps me define my goals.
This is your first step. Where do you want to be? When you close your eyes and dream of your ideal life – what do you see?
Write it down. Sketch it. Make point form notes. Draw a mind map.
What things are in your dream? What are you surrounded by? Is it people? Is it buildings? Trees or fields? Are there people you know already? Are you all alone? What are you doing? Working? Napping? Laughing? What is on your to do list in your dream? What takes up your time? How do you feel? Busy? Prepared? Calm? Inspired?
Outline your ideal life. (For real- bookmark this page, close your browser, have a cup of tea, and think about it.) Your roadmap will move you forward no matter what – move toward your dream though, don’t just move.
When you’ve got an idea of your ideal life, come on back. We’ll get you set up to move toward it.
Hedgerow Farm Studio 