4 Questions to Ask Yourself when Setting Intentions to Ensure the #BestYearEver
Lovebugs, I am a BIG fan of new beginnings and fresh starts.
I love Mondays.
I love the first day of the new month.
I love that feeling when you open up a fresh journal and you turn it over to the first page and it’s blank and it’s your job to fill it up with whatever the hell you want to.
So you’d better believe the start of not only a new year but a new DECADE has me pretty excited and pumped to share what I’m sharing today.
Before you start thinking “oh hell no, another ‘New Year, New Me’ rant, no thanks Jamie... I’m out...” keep your panties on for a minute.
Every single year there’s so much hype about “New Year’s resolutions” that you’re pretty over hearing it by the time the actual first of January arrives.
Let alone a week into a new year that’s also a new decade.
Even as someone who’s super into this ‘new beginnings’ thing, I feel you. It’s a lot.
All of this hype is probably causing you to feel a *lot* of pressure to make some big goals to become your #BestSelfEverrr, like you do at the start of every new year…
“New Year, New Me! I’m gonna workout every day and not eat carbs and quit sugar and make 100k in my business and not answer booty calls ever and be a perfect superhuman..”
Only to leave you feeling super bummed somewhere around January 15th when you’ve already self sabotaged and given up on 80% of your goals because you set the bar waaaay too high.
So then you’re like, “well fuck it, I’m going to just wait til next year.”
Or even worse, you just start getting jaded about New Year’s resolutions altogether because you can never keep them.
Well today, I’m going to share four questions you need to ask yourself in order to set goals and intentions that you’ll actually keep so you can have - really, truly, I promise - your #BestYearEver.
There are just a couple things to keep in mind before you start the process of setting your new year intentions...
Before You Set Your Intentions:
Realize that every single day you have the chance to be your #BestSelfEver.
Every fresh start is the chance to take action on what we should be doing every day. It’s a new opportunity to reset the compass to Badassery and make a commitment to ourselves that we’re going to do something differently or a little bit better than we were before.
Of course it’s a great practice to reassess and reset your goals at the start of a New Year, or review what didn’t work last year, or reflect on how far you’ve come.
But you’ve gotta stop thinking that the New Year is the only time that you should be setting goals.
You get the opportunity for a fresh start every new month, every new week, every new day, every new hour even if you really want to take it that far.
You should be asking yourself CONSTANTLY - not just on January 1st - the following questions:
Am I doing the things I said I would do?
Am I showing up as the person I know I can become?
Am I living up to my own expectations?
Having this kind of attitude is going to ensure that you don’t fuck it all up by mid January, burn out and give up. I’ll say it again, every single day is an opportunity to be your #BestSelfEver, not just the New Year. Which brings me to...
Setting quarterly intentions instead of yearly for more opportunity to review and rehash
You might want to consider not limiting yourself to setting intentions for your “year” and also not setting rigid benchmarks or goals. Real talk - I make income projections and loose goals.
I don’t even set yearly intentions anymore.
I break it down into three month (or quarterly) intentions and focus on that instead. What I want three months for now is going to be different to what I want now, because three months from now I’ll be an entirely different person. I can’t set a standard or goal for myself at the end of the year, because by that point I’ll have upleveled so much that the word for what I’m trying to achieve isn’t even in my current vocabulary.
I focus on a WORD or a vibe I want to achieve and energy I want to vibrate at instead of a specific goal. For instance, my ‘word’ for this quarter is SPACE.
Space to create. Holding space for women in a different capacity. Creating space for the universe to download my next steps. Freedom. Creativity.
Having a ‘word’ for your intention helps you to ask the first question crucial to setting badass intentions for the #BestYearEver.
Are you ready to dive in, lovebugs? Let’s go!
Ask yourself - why do I want this?
When you’re setting your intentions for 2020, I don’t just want you to decide what you want (a.k.a hitting six figures in your business) but also why do you want it?
It’s time to put the WHY back into the equation.
‘Why’, (hur hur hur) you might ask?
When you’re connected to your WHY then you are going to create a lot more momentum then if you’ve just got a goal without a reason behind it.
You’re going to be emotionally attached to your intention. You’re going to feel inspired and motivated to achieve it. You’re going to see how this intention plays into the bigger vision for your life or the positive impact it might have out in the world.
Here are some things that will help you to determine your “why” if you’re not already sure:
Why does achieving this intention make the world a better place?
What is the bigger vision behind each one of your intentions?
What will achieving this allow for you?What would it feel like to achieve this?
Figuring out your ‘why’ will also help you to paint a picture of the type of person you will need to become which - as I’m about to show you - will also help you to achieve your goal.
Ask yourself - who is the person you need to be to achieve this?
You can do this by imagining you are the person that has achieved this goal already. Put their hat on, step into their body and ask yourself the following questions-
What would they do?
What actions would they take?
How would they show up?
Who would they be?
What sort of personality would they have?
Maybe Future You would stop procrastinating like you are currently doing. Maybe they’d get in front of people more often or put themselves out there more. Maybe they’d have more discipline. Maybe they’d be more fearless. They’d have better boundaries. Better health and wellness.
Be super, super honest with yourself - what is it that is holding you back from BEING this person right now? Learn to call yourself out on your own bullshit.
And if you can’t do that for yourself, then this next point is going to be very important, so keep reading, slayer…
Asking yourself - who needs to be in my corner?
If you can’t call yourself out on your shit, then you better surround yourself with people who can. Maybe that’s a business coach. A family member. A friend/circle of friends. Whatever it looks like or needs to be for you to be able to have the absolute level of #realness with yourself possible.
Not only do you need people who are going to call you on your shit, you need people who are going to celebrate the good shit with you too. Your own personal cheer squad or Biggest Fans.
People who are going to be egging you on along the way and keeping you motivated AF towards achieving your goals.
People who are going to bring good energy to the table (you better believe everyone on Team Slay is high vibe AF and I don’t let any Negative Nancy’s in my space).
People who understand what you’re trying to achieve and who are going to HELP you to actually get there.
For some of you, that might even mean hiring a team around you who can support you. Maybe you need an OBN or a VA to help you take things to the next level. To assist you or take things off your plate which allows you to finally free up space to stay within your zone of genius.
Whatever it is for you, make sure you’ve got your people.
Asking yourself - how will I make this happen?
The easiest way to do this is to reverse engineer the process (work backwards) and break down your ‘goals’ by quarter - that is, if you’re still set on having yearly goals.
I just did this with one of my clients and I’m going to walk you through the exact same process we went through.
Say you want to make 100k this year. Let’s work backwards from that.
What would you need to make every quarter to hit 100k?
How many spots do you need to sell in your program?
How often do you need to open the doors to your program?
How many leads do you need to reach out to in order to convert to that number of clients?
How many times would you need to run your challenge/freebie/webinar?
How many people would you need to sign up to your email list?
Not all of these are going to be relevant - maybe you don’t run webinars or free challenges, maybe you don’t even have an email list - but you get the idea. It’s setting smaller, measurable goals so you can make sure you’re on track to hitting your bigger goals. From the above questions you can then go ahead and break it down even further - how many hours of work is this a day, how many hours would you need to spend on certain tasks (ie. reaching out to clients) to achieve these benchmarks.
Reverse engineering like this allows you to predict your income which gets you super excited to show up. If you knew all of these little tasks and benchmarks built up to 10k months, they wouldn’t seem so tedious anymore. You’d be jumping at the opportunity to write that email, send that DM or jump on that discovery call.
Beyond the four things you need to ask yourself, I want you to know there’s one thing you should ALWAYS be tapping into if you want to slay the fuck out of your intentions this year.
That is your ENERGY (also known as your vibe). If your energy isn’t on board with what you want, you’re going to have a very hard time achieving what you set out to do.
I know I say this a lot, but it’s because there’s so much truth to it - your energy is EVERYTHING.
Do whatever you have to do to get your energy vibing high, to get yourself into the energy of already having achieved your big goals.
Visualize, say affirmations, meditate, do exercise, burn incense, self-pleasure, dance around the house like a crazy person… whatever it is that’s going to get you into the feeling of already having achieved it and then act from that place.
Do this, and I promise you, slayers… you can have/do/be ANYTHING you want to this year.
You can and you will have the #BestYearEverrrrrr.
Happy New Year, lovebugs… I’ve got so much exciting shit to share with you this year and I can’t wait to watch you all kick some serious butt this decade.
