Happy New Year lovelies! I have been meaning to write this post for days now so I hope it’s not too late to suggest setting some cool goals for the coming year! (today is the 3^rdJan) The start of a new year is the perfect time to plan ahead (I am not the biggest planner but I’m working on it!) and I wanted to share what I did that really helped me last year achieve the things I wanted personally and for my biz. I hope you find them useful and enjoy setting up some cool goals for yourselves. Firstly I find it important to reflect on the year that’s passed and consider what worked and what didn’t. From this point ask yourself what do you want more of this year both personally and professionally. What is it you really want from 2019? It helps to divide the coming year into quarters and make 4 big goals or things you want to achieve. Setting goals for 3 months works best as this gives you enough time to plan and achieve them, it’s not too overwhelming and easier to break down into achievable actions. For each quarter:

• Write the goal for the next three months.
• How will you achieve this goal? Break this down into smaller steps that will help you get there, what is the first thing you’d need to do?
• What will be different when you achieve this goal? How will it feel?
• Tell someone what you are going to do, this will make you accountable and remind you to stick with it!

At the end of each month review what you have been up to and look again at what worked and what didn’t. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you fall short though and leave room to move things around to be a bit flexible too. My husband gave me a big white board, which lives on my studio wall where I write things really big and can see the steps I am going to take and easily cross them off as I go along! Something like this really helps if you are like me who loses every piece of paper that I write important things on… Another thing that I did last year was to write down 100 things I would like to happen in my life. I tried to do this without thinking too much about it on a big sketchbook page. It’s funny but 100 is a lot and I found it quite hard! My dad used to say “the more you ask for the more you will get”and believe me it works! Writing things down it is like setting them in concrete and makes you more likely to go for it and achieve them. Go wild with these, they can be anything from - ‘I want to dress more trendy to I want to work with xxxx’or ‘I will go to Japan this year’. I really urge you to try this, it’s amazing. The point of this is not just to get your dreams and desires out there but also to get you into the frame of mind of the possibility of achieving and that you can do it. This is what Mathew Syed calls a growth mindset. Revisit your list every now and then, see if you’ve achieved any of them, update or adjust it. When I first did this I couldn’t get to 100 but this year I am going get them all down! Another great way to get into this mindset is by using visualisation boards. These are boards where you put pictures of what you want for your life, things you dream of no matter how big or small to help you focus on what you want to achieve. I remember my father doing this and recently a lot of people are talking about this approach. It’s really fun and will get your creative juices flowing! I like to do it the old fashion way by cutting pictures out of magazines and sticking them onto an A3 board, but you can also use Pinterest secret boards or any other way you find works for you. Once again these can be anything that comes to mind, a car you might want, certain type of clothes you wish you wore, places you’d like to travel to, the lifestyle you always dreamed of (it’s never too late to change things) or the kind of business you want to work in. You can write a paragraph or two next to each picture giving more details of why you’ve chosen it or what it means to you. An example for me is I’d love to drive a black Qashqai and have the kind of clients who value my work and are willing to pay the price I feel I am worth. You can make a number of boards for different aspects or just keep it to one. Hang them around your office or somewhere you can see it and check in on them from time to time. Last year I invested in a year planner from the Design Trust called DREAM PLAN DO as it was really useful for my creative business. This year I’m buying a Janet Murray media diary and planner which has key dates relevant to my business. There are loads of great planners from Ban do, Paperchase and other places. One of my goals for this year is to design a Wall Planner and diary. Ok I’ve said it now so I can’t take it back!! It’s so easy in today’s manic world to get bogged down reacting to the next big problem and forget how important it is to lift your head up and look. Look at where you’ve been, look at where you are and look at where you want to go. Go easy on yourself and have a bit of fun dreaming. You never know where it might take you! I have designed a fun ‘goals’ sheet you can download and print here! Hope this article has helped, if you’ve found it useful then please share with me what your goals are for this year? Share and comment below with any questions or anything you’d like to know.