Happy New Year!! 

Ooh, I love January 1st. While I know that every month, week, day, and breath can be a fresh start, the beginning of a new year is the ultimate fresh start. I get absolutely giddy just thinking about all the potential in the upcoming 365 366 days. Goal setting is super fun, because (despite all the statistics about failed New Years resolutions) goal setting is the prerequisite to achieving our goals. Studies show that both writing our goals and speaking them out loud make us much more likely to accomplish them, so I always, always, always write down my little goals on January 1st. 

For the past few years, I’ve created little monthly goals for the year, and I share them here to inspire you to create your own. (See 2018 and 2019). Rather than one giant habit that I may or may not keep doing for the entire year, monthly goals allow me to experiment lots of different habits to decide what sounds the funnest, and drop the things that aren’t serving me. 

I have certain monthly goals that I always love (hello, meditation!) and so I repeat them every year, and other goals that didn’t work out for me very well (like a month of no sugar – that was too extreme for me) and I’ve dropped them and come up with new ideas for the next year. Here are my 12 goals for 2020: 

12 Little Monthly Goals for 2020

Jan // Meditate every day. Ha, y’all!! This is a repeat from the past 2 years because meditation has made such a big difference in my life! It’s one of those things that has profoundly impacted me…yet I don’t always do it because it means slowing down, which I’m not very good at. I like to kick off January with this goal to help me stop, silence my noisy mind, and listen to my intuition. (If you’re interested in learning more about meditation, I highly recommend trying the free trial of the headspace app!) 

Feb // Give someone a genuine compliment every day. February is the month of love, right? I’m always amazed at how loved and valued I feel when someone goes out of her way to say something nice to me. It’s pretty fun knowing I have the power to totally turn someone’s day around just by saying something nice, whether it’s in person, on Facebook, and with a quick text. I think this will be a really fun goal for the month of February. 

March // Let my sisters each pick a book I have to read. March is national reading month. I’m going to ask my 3 sisters to each pick a book that I have to read. We all have similar but slightly different taste in literature, so I’m sure my horizon will be expanded by asking them to pick my monthly book selections. 

April // Put my phone “to bed” at 9:00 every night. Ok, this is something I’ve wanted to try for a while…but I’m scared, because scrolling through my phone at night is such a strong habit, ha! I know that looking at a screen right before bed makes it harder for me to fall asleep, and it also allows instagram/email/Facebook to be the final influence on my brain before I fall asleep, which I don’t love. So I’m going to try putting my phone “to bed” somewhere other than my bedroom (probably in the kitchen) and not touching it until the morning. This will involve getting some sort of other alarm source (maybe my baby? haha) and white noise, since I currently use an app for that.

May // Dive deep into one cocktail. I love enjoying cocktails at home, and Nate and I keep talking about how fun it would be to make one type of cocktail for a season and get really good at that one…maybe experimenting with different liquors/ingredients in it, too? I’m thinking of doing something simple, like Negronis or Manhattans. TBD! 

June // Go on an evening walk after dinner. Ahhh, June! Longer days and the kick off to summer! June isn’t as blisteringly hot at July/August, so I’m going to do evening walks after dinner with the family (yep, dragging Nate and Milo along for this one.) 

July // Write in a gratitude journal every day. July 2020 is the month that I’ll turn 30, and I can think of no better way to kick off a new decade of life than by feeling as thankful as possible for all the wonderful things that have occurred in my 20s, and feeling thankful in advance for what will happen in my 30s. 

August // Take an entire week off of social media. After taking a 6 week maternity leave from social media, I’ve realized how refreshing it is for my mind and soul to take time away from the noise. It’s not a big deal to take time away from it. It’s really not. So, why do I still have so much trouble taking a break from the ‘gram, when I know it’s good for me and I know I enjoy it? Well, I don’t have an answer to that, but I know that if I make it an official goal, I’ll actually do it. 

September // Cook out of one cookbook for the whole month. This is a repeat goal from 2019, and it was SO much fun! I only cooked out of Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook Plenty for one month last year, and it challenged me to try recipes I would normally just skip over. I’ll pick a new cookbook for September 2020, and every recipe I make for the month has to be from that cookbook. 

October // Try 31 different beers in 31 days. Haha! I’m laughing to myself right now, because this is a failed goal from the past 2 years.. In 2018 Nate decided to do Keto, and I wasn’t about to try 31 craft beers at home and tempt him in that way (poor guy, it would have been torture for him…), and then in 2019 I got pregnant. So…2020 it is! 

November // Host two dinner events at home. It can be a big group of girlfriends for a potluck, a couple friends of ours for a dinner date, or a family member that we cook for, but I want to host two dinner events during the month of November. 

December // Do one big, scary thing to benefit my future self. Anything at all. It can be personal, relational, or career-related, but it has to be something that’s a bit scary and something that my future self will thank me for.

Cheers to a fantastic 2020!