2016 in review… and 2017 Resolutions

So – it’s almost the end of 2016! As you’ll know from my recent post about feeling a loss of motivation I haven’t exactly been hunting down my goals this year. HOWEVER, the reason I wrote that post is because I believe very strongly in goal setting and it’s power. I set these goals at the start of the year, made them my desktop for the majority of it, and as a result achieved almost all of them without much conscious effort! I once heard the analogy that writing down your goals is like setting the sat-nav on a boat to constantly realign you to guide towards them. Seems to have worked for me!

Side note – the more conscious and pro-active you can be the better, but writing down goals is still far better than doing nothing!

So, here’s a summary of how I did (and feel free to check out my 2016 Resolutions Setting blog post):

Achieved:

• Visit 7 countries – it’s actually been 10! Sri Lanka, Malta, Italy, America, Canada, Thailand, England, Egypt, Germany, France. What a great year!
• 10 new blog brand collabs – done 🙂
• Negative people – this goal was a little vague, but I feel like everyone in my life right now is awesome!
• Accounting – paid for himself 10x over, and he’s bloody brilliant! Happy to give recommendations if you need someone.
• Editing skills – I learnt how to use Final Cut Pro and have now moved entirely over to that
• Ten books – currently done 14 and counting!
• £30k online – incredibly, even though I haven’t been tracking month to month, this is going to be almost my EXACT income this year. Extremely exciting as it’s doubled from last year!
• Organise hard drives and scrapbook – not a big one, but it is done!
• ‘Kon Mari’ my belongings – I want to do a second wave of this, but I got rid of at least half of what I own this year. Feels amazing! Highly highly recommend her book.

Partial success:

• Ditch quick cash jobs – I’ve cut back massively but was still doing some freelance PR throughout the year. Will do even less in 2017.
• A great listener – not sure if I’ve changed much but this goal was too vague to judge!
• Release 20 Udemy courses – I managed 8 but I made a conscious choice to stop creating for Udemy and start building other income streams instead.
• Find my dream job – I am overall extremely happy so maybe I did manage this, but I still don’t jump out of bed excited about work. I’m just excited about the overall shape my life has taken.
• Learn DSLR photography – I took a course on this and learnt a lot, but think I could still improve by a long way!
• Embrace my body – too vague and tricky!

Fails:

• Two dance classes per week – I was doing one a week in Chiang Mai but otherwise I’ve not managed this.
• 5000 youtube subscribers – I got over 1000 which was very exciting, and I’ve never missed a Tuesday 6pm upload. However, I’ve decided to focus my channel on Nomad Girl videos so hoping this’ll see a much bigger uptake in 2017.
• 10 minutes meditation per day – utter fail! But I’d still like to aim for this again.

So – 9 successes, 6 partials, and 3 failures – not too bad if you ask me!

And now, on to 2017!

I’ve used the same template from Secret O.W.L society – head on over there to get yours too. And here are my goals…

I’m not going to go into them in great detail as they’re all quite self explanatory, but I’ve tried to be even less vague this year about what success on each goal looks like. I have also been really honest with myself about whether I ACTUALLY want each change and am willing to make the sacrifices required. Let’s see how it turns out!

I’d love to hear what structure you use for your resolutions, and what you’ve been doing this year. Head over the Secret O.W.L Society to download the printable for yourself if you’d like to join in too.