Personal Goal Setting for Magical Living

Personal goal setting is an important part of living an intentional and magical life for me. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the weeds and get caught up in the day to day busyness of life and running a small business. Personal goal setting brings me closer to achieving my dreams and lets me keep the bigger picture in mind. Because goal setting has helped me tremendously in getting to the place where I want to be, I want to share my steps with you too.
Keep reading to find out how personal goal setting can be done in 5 simple and achievable steps.

As you may know by now, reflection is an integral part of my life. I reflect through my journal writing, art, and during moments of self-care. It allows me to take pause and be intentional with the things that I do. It gives me clarity, calm and a sense of gratitude. 
So naturally, before setting my goals, I take time for reflection over the past week, month or year and where I want to go. Here are some questions that can help you in this process:

1. What was your biggest win? How did it make you feel? How did you make it happen?
   
2. What is one area that you would like to improve?
   
3. When did you feel most alive in the last month, 6 months or a year? 
   
4. What are you most grateful for?
   
5. How do you want to feel in the next year?
   
6. What is one word that would describe your life in the next year?
   
7. How will you invest in yourself this year?
   
8. Is what you’re currently doing in alignment with your dreams? If not, what are some changes that you need to make?
   

Use these questions as prompts to help you determine what your goals are for the next year. I generally like to make yearly goals with the big picture in mind and then create smaller, actionable steps to help me reach these goals. 

When I’m goal setting for the year, I like to have a specific goal for each aspect of my life that I think are important. For me, that’s my professional (business related), personal, self-care and magical living areas. Since self-care and magical living is a huge part of my life, it’s important for me to separate them from my professional and personal so that I have specific goals for those areas as well. 
Using the reflection prompts in Step 1, create one goal for each of these areas. Though creating multiple goals are doable, I think starting with one for each area is a great place to begin, especially if you’re new to goal setting. Allow yourself to focus on that one goal for the duration you’ve decided. 
Your goal for each section should be a big picture goal. For example, for my magical living goal, it could be something like being more adventurous because I want to feel more alive this year. Being adventurous is very vague goal and doesn’t really tell me how to achieve it. This leads me to step 3 - Create smaller goals. 

Step 3 - Create smaller, tangible goalsTo create tangible steps, we have to start with the big picture goals. Let’s use the example of “being adventurous.” It could be as simple as doing something that I normally wouldn’t once a month and getting out of my comfort zone. I could also reflect on when I felt most alive in the last year and recreate similar experiences for future months. The steps should be actionable and task related - things that we actually do to achieve our big picture goals. The duration is up to you and how often you need to do it to achieve your big picture goals. It could be as often as weekly or less often as on a quarterly basis. 
I like to write in a journal specifically dedicated for my goals. In it, I write down my goals and map out the steps I need to achieve them. I use my journal to also write down my thoughts and reflection as I’m working towards my goals. Once I’ve figured out the steps that I need to take to reach my goals, I schedule them to my calendar and my weekly to-do lists. It’s important to schedule these tasks into my calendar so that I actually make time for them.
When you complete the tasks you’ve set up each month (or week or quarter), make sure to celebrate your wins!! You deserve to recognize your accomplishments and it will help you feel more excited about getting closer to achieving your goals!

The next step is creating a vision board. As a visual person, my vision board serves as a daily reminder to me of what my big picture goals are. It influences my daily actions (or inactions) and can help to manifest my dreams and future goals. 

Here are the steps to a vision board:

1. Think of the words, images and objects that you want on your vision board. They should evoke a strong sense of feeling and emotions when you see these things.
   
2. Next, look for these words, images and objects. If you see an inspirational quote that you like, print it out. Go through your favorite magazines for words and images that resonate with you and cut them out. Place the things that strongly represents your goals and dreams and glue them to a blank canvas or piece of wood. Add as much as you would like or as little.
   
3. Place your vision board somewhere that you would see it on a daily basis. You can even place it by your magical altar or next to your bed. The vision board works subconsciously as you’re reminded of your goals and dreams. However, you’ll also want to be intentional with them and use them as a visualization tool to achieve your dreams. 

Step 5 - Reevaluate your goals 

Reevaluating your goals should be a part of your personal goal-setting process for one reason only - making sure that our goals are still in alignment with our dreams. If they aren’t, it’s good to update your goals (and possibly your vision board too) to make sure that we are intentionally working towards where we want to go. 
Personal goal setting has been a powerful tool in helping me live an intentional and magical life. It has given me space for the things that are important to me and helps me to stay aligned with those things. The steps I've outlined above can be used for any type of goal that you have, whether it's personal or professional or something else. I hope that you try out goal setting and experience how amazing it can be!
Have you set goals for yourself? If not, what’s stopping you from doing so? I’d love to hear in the comments below!