Wintery reflections and setting goals
I took myself off on a river walk again today and it was the perfect wintery day. Bright sunshine, cool and crisp with snow-capped mountain views.
Wintery river view with plenty of scope for the imagination!
I have been thinking a lot about what this year has been about for me and what I want my theme to be for the new year. This previous year I have been working on getting to know myself, trying various things on for size and perhaps discarding them. Trying out new habits and waiting to see which ones have stuck and which ones were only short term. I tried out various styles and experimented with colours to see which ones I liked. I’ve been at opposite ends of the spectrum with this! I have gone from feeling drawn to deep and dark colours to the complete opposite now where I feel more drawn to light, clean and pastel colours. I had set myself the goals to finish my body massage course, gain experience in massage through a Saturday job, and start a blog. I’m happy to say I achieved those goals. My theme for this year was ‘letting go’ and I think that is definitely something I have been working on. By working on self-awareness , gaining a deeper understanding of my patterns and the old stories I keep telling myself. I have been working on accepting myself more, engaging with my anxiety rather than avoiding fears and becoming aware of which patterns and stories I am ready to let go of.
Financially I’m not where I want to be so that will be a goal for next year. I would like to feel more financially free, simplify my life so that I have more time for the things I enjoy doing. Linked to this is another big goal for the new year: moving house and downsizing. This should reduce some of the financial pressure. This pressure came for me in the form of unexpected car costs and repairs. A positive that came from this is that I gained clarity on whether I wanted to keep my car or buy a new one. I realised I actually really love my car and will always prefer to keep it going for as long as possible and keep repairing it, rather than buy a new car. I’ve always loved old things and my blue land rover really suits me and my personality.
Now that I have been getting to know myself better, my theme for the new year will be linked to rebuilding myself and expressing myself authentically. Another goal I want to focus on is to inject more joy & fun into my day to day. It might sound strange but I don’t really know how to ‘play’ as an adult and that’s something I feel I need more of in my life. To find things that I can look forward to. I realised that to keep things fun and joyful I need to keep mixing things up and keep creating new ideas to experiment with. Things such as trying new recipes, discovering new music, product creation, exploring new areas with my walks. It’s about exploration for me and at the moment, coming up with new ideas doesn’t come natural to me and is something I would like to practice. So here is a goal I could set myself for the new year: come up with one new thing to try out each week, whether that’s a new recipe, making a product, trying a new walk etc.
When it comes to how I set goals, I have been setting an overall theme for the year with bigger goals attached to my theme. I then like to set myself smaller goals each month. I’ll think about what I want my focus to be for the month, which habits I want to develop further and any specific things I want to achieve so that I can check things off a list. This always feels satisfying when I can check things off a list and helps keep me motivated for the following months. It also helps me to build confidence in myself.
Have you got any themes for the new year or goals that you’ve set? What will your focus be for 2026?
Another pretty view from my winter walk