My 4 Step Guide To Setting Your Goals

By Ashley JohnsNov 1, 2021

A new decade is here. There's something about that that feels gigantic in the best way possible, exciting and full of possibility! I've always loved fresh starts, an open sky full of dreams and ideas I can create. Endless. Limitless. What will you create in this next decade? Who do you want to be?

Whether you've never set intentions in your life or you just want to level up your intention setting game, I'm going to show you how to get clear on what you want, decide where you're going and make a plan of action to get you moving that way.

WHY IS SETTING INTENTIONS LIFE-CHANGING?

I know you want to feel that you're living from your heart, not from habit. That you're free to create the life of your dreams, not follow what everyone else is doing. That you want to be happy and proud of yourself and keep growing into what's possible. Getting intentional in your life is an act of self love. It's a choice to start looking forward and building what you want deep down. When you choose to live from a space of intentionality, you live from your heart and what you really want vs. letting life run you. You carry out your truest desires and purpose for your life. You're connected to what you want, who you want to be and you take action to move that way. You choose to stop living on autopilot and live on purpose! You live true and there's no better feeling than being the girl in your own life who's giving you everything you want.

You are the artist of yourself and your life. When you decide who you want to be and where you want to go, you just start. You put one foot in front of the other and go.

WHAT YOU NEED:

a notebook + pen
a great playlist to get inspired ~ click here for my monthly Spotify Playlists!
your favorite candle, essential oils & anything else to get you into the mood to dream
phone on silent & distraction free

STEP 1: REVIEW

Before you can look forward with clarity, it's so important to see what's behind you and reflect where you're at now. And p.s. you can do these 5 steps for yourself in personal, business and financial and you can do it every single week or month if you want. It's a really great exercise to stay on top of the intention you bring in your life. Take your notebook out and give yourself time and space to answer the question below. What did you do this year? Start jotting down all the things that happened this year. The goals you hit, the moves you made, the changes that happened, the tough challenges you faced and anything else that stands out. This works better for some people to reflect on each month rather than the whole. Open your calendar and remember what happened in each month then write it down. Think of this as the year in review.

STEP 2: REFLECT

Learning comes from reflecting. Reflecting on what worked and what didn't work. Reflecting on what lit you up and what didn't. Reflecting on what felt really awesome and what felt off. When I took my Goal Coaching course, there was a concept that says, "The power of knowing what you want, comes from knowing what you don't want." I like to think of the reflection step as shaking the snow globe up so you can see the whole picture. It's not an easy step to reflect back and tune into the feelings that didn't feel good but it's a necessary step. So take a deep breath and stay with it. Most times we gotta go through the mud to become the lotus.

How do you feel about what happened? Think about everything this year has meant and write down how the year makes you feel.
What lit you up?
What hasn't lit you up?
What dimmed your fire?
How did you change this year? Think about who you were at the beginning of the year. The problems and things that ate at you on a daily basis. The things that took your energy and may not take your energy now.

When you reflect, you can see how you've changed. You can sense what it is that you've learned, what you want to release into your past, and what you want to carry forward with you.

STEP 3: GET CLEAR

This step is about getting really clear on what you do want. You do that from first reviewing where you've come from and where you are and then reflecting on how you feel about the path you took. Then, you decide how you want to feel moving forward. As you answer the questions, you might notice some limiting thoughts come through. Choose to override them and let them pass. Remember that whatever you want, it's valid. You have to believe big and know that anything is possible when you believe in it. Commit to the process and your truest desires will come out!

What will you take with you from the lessons you've learned this past year?What will you leave behind? Think about limiting beliefs, old ways of reacting, stories you tell yourself or ego based decisionsHow do you want to feel in 2021? Think about how you felt this past year and how you want to feel moving forward. Do you want to feel more freedom? Do you want to feel more love? Do you want to feel more confidence in yourself? Do you want more peace? Do you want to feel like a boss b*tch who lives by her own rules and says "thank you, next" when something isn't for her?

It's about asking yourself where you want to go, who you want to be and how you want to feel in 2021!

STEP 4: SET YOUR INTENTIONS

The previous three steps are the foundation to now set your intentions. The core of an intention is how you want to show up. Clear intentions begin with an "I will" or "I am" statement that are followed up by what you are choosing to step into in your life. Your intentions are statements that say: what you want is already done. It's already in the bag sister. All you have to do is state it, believe it then step into it.

Important things to remember when setting intention:

start your intention with "I will" or "I am"
focus on what you will do, not what you won't do (ie: I will focus on what I think about myself vs I will stop worrying about what others think of me)
your intentions are a statement of how you want to show up in your life, think of them as you going into your future, deciding what you want and creating intentions that say, "this is who I am" and I'm being her now!

Here are a few of my intentions for this coming year:

I will keep leveling up, stepping into my discomfort and be excited for the next step
I will be a magnet for people who encourage my growth & inspire me
I will embrace the challenges that come my way because I know they hold all the gold in lessons
I will be the lighthouse and shine my brightest light in service of others

My 2021 intentions all came from me reviewing, reflecting and then getting really clear on where I want to go, who I want to be and how I want to feel in 2021. You can see that the intentions we set for ourselves are like creating the stairway to simply step up into that next version of ourselves. The version of yourself that grows, pushes herself to be true to herself, that steps into her power, that believes fiercely in herself and just keeps taking the next step forward, one by one.

HOW MANY INTENTIONS SHOULD YOU HAVE?

A list of 5-10 is a really great list to focus on for the year. It can be easy to get carried away with your intentions because they're just so much fun to extract the lemonade out of the lemon of your visions but you don't want to get so many where you aren't able to really focus on them as individuals and as a whole. You'll know it when you get them. And it's really fun to make one intention span over personal and business or personal and financial, etc. You'll find your intentions can work across the board in some cases!

The questions to ask yourself to help guide you to set your intentions are:

What would {your name} a year from now do?
How would {your name} a year from now act?
How does {your name} a year from now show up?

Now it's your turn. Take some time with yourself, light a candle, turn an inspiring playlist on and jam out to creating some magic!

CRYSTALLIZE YOUR INTENTIONS.

When you're finished with your intentions, it's time to go back and crystallize them. What I mean by this is go back and verify that they're all true for you and adjust if needed. The intention is to feel whole and complete and look at your list and say to yourself, HELL YAH, that's it baby. If there are words, intentions or the phrasing of them that isn't a hell yes, go back and refine until it is. You'll know it by the feeling of it. Trust your intuition, she knows her shit.

THE FINAL STEP: CREATE YOUR ACTION STEPS

Action follows intention. Think about it: when you decide you're going to be healthier and you say, "I will be the healthiest version of myself this year," your actions will look very different with this intention vs. if you didn't have an intention. The times I wasn't intentional about what I put in my mouth, I would put whatever felt good in the moment in my mouth. The action changes based off the intention you set for yourself.

The result follows your action. If the intention is the compass guiding your ship forward to where you want to go, the action is the person steering the boat. {{that's you}} The result is where you go and where you end up down the road. The result follows your action.

Now that you have crystal clear intentions of where you're going, who you want to be and how you want to feel over the next year, it's time to create a list of action steps that you'll follow over this next year that support the intentions you have. In your journal, rewrite your first intention and the action steps in the format below. As an example, I'll show you one of mine: I will embrace the challenges that come my way because I know they hold all the gold in lessons.

Action steps:

When a challenge comes my way, I will stay grounded in knowing this isn't happening to me, it's happening for me.
When a challenge comes my way, I will watch myself and observe the thoughts and feelings that come up. Then I will manage them by redirecting them to my new story vs. my old story. ie: I will ask myself, "What can I learn from this?"
If I start going down the rabbit hole of negativity when a challenge arises, I will take a deep breath, go read my intention and reset myself

Do this with each intention. When you do this for each intention, you're creating scenarios to set yourself up for success. You're creating action steps that literally anchor you as the person taking on this new path. Just as a captain would make sure she knows where she's going, she'd also know how she's going to get there and the back up plans if something goes wrong. She's prepared and ready for any situation and knows her plan has to be steady, firm and strong to withstand any obstacles.

This is what you're doing with each intention and action steps you create. You'll also notice when you list out the action steps for each intention, you might feel this literal anchoring feeling. You're teaching your subconscious mind to be ready to respond no matter what comes up. The next time I face a challenge, I am literally prepared for how to respond to it because I've mapped it out and in doing so, I'm directing my subconscious before it even has a chance to react in its old way. I'm literally laying down the course for it to follow. When you're finished with your action steps for each intention, you've completed the mission of setting your Powerful AF Intentions for 2021! Look to them every single day and keep stepping forward fiercely!

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