Howdy Gents & Ladies,
If you’ve been here for awhile (since April 1st, 2019) then you may have seen my blog post entitled April 2019: I have plans and in that you saw 10 goals that I had set for myself for the month of April… By mid-April I had either given up or procrastinated those goals away and then at the end of April some sh*t went down in my regular day to day life that I won’t be discussing here (it had nothing to do with Eduardo or the dogs or my family or my job or anything like that). Anyways, with my life essentially falling apart around me during the last week of April, everything I had procrastinated became impossible.
Then in May, where I had planned on making another set of goals/continuing my April goals, things continued to downward spiral…
I try to have a really positive and optimistic disposition about life in general but basically all of May was a sh*t storm for me in my regular life (I’ll talk about some things here in future posts, but not everything). Every time it felt like, okay, things are finally getting better, something else bad would happen.
And now, it’s almost June. I feel like I literally lost the entire month of May and I’m angry about that (I was going to say ‘I kind of feel a little mad’ but there is no ‘kind of’ and there is no ‘little.’ I’m mad. I’m mad at the person that threw the proverbial pebble into the lake, and I’m even more upset by the ripple effects that will continue to impact me, likely for the rest of my life. That’s what permanency means and the doctor can try to say it as nicely as he wants but my life, my body, my brain, they won’t ever be the same). However, I one hundred percent understand that worse things happen to people each and every day and that my life is not all bad and I try to focus on the good things in life, like the cuddles I get from my dogs, or the earrings I found on Poshmark, or the fact that all my fingers and toes function properly.
I’m doing this follow up post because if it were up to me, I would ignore that April 1st post and never talk about it again. However, it’s okay to set goals and not reach them, that’s what I’m here to say. It’s okay that you set ten goals and only managed to reach one. What’s not okay is to beat yourself up over it. Whenever you make a goal, it should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) [p.s. I obviously learned about goal setting in school and I always wrote it off as complete BS. But then my boss was going over their 2019 goals and they used the acronym and I realized it’s not BS and it actually helps me set and achieve my goals].
Now, you set a SMART goal and you don’t reach it. What should you do? Evaluate why you didn’t reach that goal. Was there something that prevented you from doing it? Did you encounter a hurdle you weren’t expecting? Should you have tried harder? Whatever the reason, address it. And set another goal, this time taking the reason for delay into consideration.
With all of that being said, let me directly address my April goals:
- Blog post every other day. – *buzzer noise*
- I didn’t do this. Obviously. I have a lot of excuses for why I don’t blog as often as I want to, usually I chalk it up to ‘I didn’t have enough content’ but I always have content. I set this goal after talking myself down from posting every single day. To make sure I set a goal that’s more attainable, I’m going to set a small goal for June (like posting once a week) and perhaps pre-write some posts, so I don’t fall behind again.
- Workout/do something more strenuous than a short walk 3x/Week. – I would call this a half success.
- I was doing pretty good with this for the first half of the month. We were going to the gym several times a week, or taking long shopping trips, along with playing baseball once a week… Those things aren’t options for me at the moment and… yeah. I’m probably not going to have a fitness related goal next month.
- Stop eating at 7pm. – nope.
- I have a pretty terrible relationship with food so when the tough get going, my food rules go out the window. However, the point of creating these small goals is so that when things do get hard, I already have healthy habits set up and I don’t fall off the wagon just because I’m going through a tough time. Be prepared to see more nutrition oriented goals in June, my nutrition is one of the few things I have total control over right now.
- Wake up early. – this wasn’t a win either.
- I wasn’t sold on this goal to begin with and I didn’t stick to it. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping this month due to muscle pain and when I do fall asleep I can’t stay asleep because I’m in pain. That leads to me waking up later so I can catch up on the sleep I missed because I was uncomfortable through the night. Something good for June might be to set a bed time, instead of a wake up time.
- Eat more whole foods. – TBH this wasn’t a real goal to begin with.
- We’re already pretty good about eating whole foods. Our meals are mostly vegetables with a carb (usually pasta) and sometimes meat. I used April to really think about what we eat most days and I’m pretty confident that we met this goal. We’ve been avoiding meat for most of May now and it’s changed a few of our habits and we’re eating even more vegetables. Eduardo is eating more beans and chickpeas and yeah. I’ll have a more specific goal in June regarding whole foods.
- Complete a 10,000 word draft of my second novel. – DONE.
- Hello. Your girl crushed this goal. As a matter of fact, my draft is 24,000 words. And I COMPLETED my first novel, printing it out, line editing by myself, everything. I’m waiting on feedback from a few beta readers before I go about perhaps trying to find an agent? There will absolutely be more writing goals in June.
- Finish 2-3 blankets. – it’s a naw from me dawg.
- Like I’ve said, April was a mess. May was worse. I haven’t made any progress on my blankets. Crocheting became insignificant compared to the other things I was going through. I have tentative plans to work on them this long weekend coming up and then next month might have a different crafting kind of goal…
- Have a minimum of one podcast episode completed. – No.
- This is perhaps the most disappointing, I complete forgot about this goal altogether. I think about the podcast we’ve wanted to do all the time. It might be time for me to face the music that this podcast isn’t going to happen and move onto something else.
- Rearrange our bedroom. – YES!
- We did this and it has dramatically changed our lives! I’m going to have a whole post about how rearranging our bedroom positively impacted so many aspects of our lives and I can’t wait to share it with you.
- Journal Daily/Have more intentionally positive thoughts. – Journaling was a no, and the positive thoughts… Ehh…
- I was straightforward with myself on the 1st and addressed the fact that journaling everyday was probably not going to happen. I shouldn’t have set that goal for myself if I didn’t intend to do it at all.
- Intentionally positive thoughts. Like I said. I try to stay positive and optimistic all the time. The truth of the matter is that we’re not always positive, and that’s okay. I had to stop and tell myself several times in the first two or so weeks of May that being upset, even being angry, was okay. My default isn’t always sunshine and daisies, but I love that after so many years of living in such a dark place, I can see silver linings on my clouds.
That’s 4/10 goals kind of met. With 2/10 being absolutely crushed! I’m okay with these numbers. A few years ago, if I’d set these kinds of goals for myself, I might have only succeeded in reaching one of them, and the nine that I didn’t reach would have made me so terribly upset.
I want you to know that just because you didn’t reach all of your goals, doesn’t mean that you failed. You can set new goals. You should reflect on what prevented you from reaching your goals, and evaluate how important those goals are to you. If they’re so important that not meeting them would ruin your life, change your behavior to make sure the opportunity to succeed doesn’t slip past you again.
I believe in you. So hard. And you need to believe in you. Okay? I know you might be rolling your eyes, or calling me a headcase, but it’s true. Do you need someone to be accountable to? You can always drop a comment below or send me an email (november@teamsantana.com) or find me on Instagram and DM me there (@novembersantana) or on Twitter (TBH Twitter is my least used SM platform but I do have one @novembersantana) or anywhere else you can find me and I will be as supportive as I can be in helping you with moral support to reach your goals.
Anyways, I hope you have a great rest of your day and that you’ll come back to this blog next week to see what I have planned for next month!
Until next time – Xx.
Team Santana 