If you’ve let your New Years resolutions fall by the wayside this year, don’t wait until next January to try again. Start by setting your Mid-Year Goals and get going right away!
How many months are left of this year? How much progress could you make in that time?
This is your call to restart now, you owe it to yourself ♡
Life happens, mistakes happen, sometimes we get thrown a curveball that leaves us dazed for a hot minute. Give yourself grace! We’re all friends here, you don’t have to make excuses; you just have to take action and there’s no time like the present.
Mistakes don’t cancel out the progress you already made or the lessons you learned.
One of my favourite titbits of human psychology is the fresh start effect! Mainly because it works wonders for my motivation. I found that I’m more likely to even start at all if I have a time and date that feel significant to write on the calendar.
You can use it to your advantage too, let’s see how to establish some mid-year goals and move with purpose this year. It’s not over yet!
Mid-year goals don’t have to be fancy
Here’s how it started, I felt inspired during the Summer Solstice: a cute little reflection and some goal setting.
Small warning: my journal entries mention symptoms of low mood and anxiety. It’s a happy story though I promise ♡
It wasn’t even my plan to write this when I opened my journal but here’s where I ended up. You’ll notice it’s a bit easy going.
I’m being kinder to myself this year.
But being kind to yourself doesn’t have to mean idle or safe, you can still set goals that push you to your limit.
As a working Mum of two toddlers (yes real-life work not just this blogging thing that I love), there are a few goals on here that aren’t going to be easy.
I’ve kept it uncomplicated for now. Family and wellness on the left, work and finance on the right and then a sprinkling of things to keep in mind on the bottom.
Time to leverage the fresh start effect – it can be the beginning of July, start of the summer holidays or even a fresh September start (new academic year). If you’ve got a birthday coming up, even a religious celebration, that’s a good time too.
Pick a date, now let’s go!
Reflect on your journey so far
Ok, grab a notebook and a pen. Before we set our mid-year goals, we’re going to ask ourselves two questions:
1. What have I learned so far this year?
Spend some time thinking about your year since setting your New Year resolutions. There will be extractable truths and lessons that you can write down.
Maybe you’ve only just started on your journey to self discovery and you’ve learned a whole lot about yourself. Or you might have had a wake up call and learned to slow down and be present before life sweeps you away. Perhaps you’ve been learning a new skill at college or online. After all, Albert Einstein said:
“When you stop learning you start dying.”
2. What have I done that I’m proud of?
So you didn’t make as much progress toward your goals as you’d hoped. We can’t change that. I didn’t either, it’s ok. When thinking back I realised how far I’d come. I’ve pushed through my anxiety in a way I’d never dreamed of and kept looking ahead in spite of challenging circumstances.
So what have you done this year that you’re proud of? It can be a massive deal, or the small details of your every day that your happy with. Maybe you did hit some of your goals in spite of life throwing challenges at you.
Celebrate the good.
Did you notice that neither of those questions are negative or guilt-tripping?
What mid-year goals should you set?
Look back on your new year resolutions that you wrote this year, or the goals that you set the last time you had a wave of inspiration.
Didn’t write them down? You need to this time, you’re giving yourself a 42% higher chance of achieving them!
Now, which of those goals were for the fantasy you? No I don’t mean your higher self or your best version of you, I mean the version of you that you like to fantasise about but you know, deep down, you’re not going to put in the effort to get it.
I’ll give you an example: I’d love to have sculpted arms and rock hard abs. I could set my goal to doing certain weights 5 times a week, core exercises, lean diet and all that. I could. But I’m not invested enough in the end result to endure the hard work and dedication it takes to get there.
It’s ok to be real about it, getting ripped isn’t my priority in this phase of my life. That’s not to say it wont be in the future. Ultimately, you want to set yourself up to succeed in what matters right now!
Now we’ve stricken those off, we can look at what goals we can re-instate for our mid-year goals. Maybe circumstances have changed since the last time you did this so you want to add some extra goals.
You’ll see in the photos above what sort of goals I’ve set for the next 6 months. I kept them small and simple. Some are experimental, like picking a tarot card every morning in November for guidance. I thought it’d be a nice practice to exercise my intuition and ground myself in the morning.
Choose what inspires you right now and think about how you’re going to imprint them into your routine
A question I like to ask myself (taken from The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan) for any goal that I’m starting to work toward is:
What is the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else is easier or unnecessary?
You can’t help but be led to set up systems in order to achieve your goals by asking this question!
Read this post on how to prioritise.
Lastly, keep yourself accountable to keep making progress toward your mid-year goals
Some ideas for accountability are:
- An accountability buddy – pair up in a two or a group, you have to check in and keep each other accountable to the goals you promise (a bit like weightwatchers)
- Keep your goals visible, remind yourself daily what you’re working toward and don’t let yourself forget what you’re really doing it for.
- StickK some money on the line! No really, you put an amount of money of your choice on the line, if you miss your goal then that money goes to a friend, charity (or anti-charity!) of your choice. Pledge money to a political cause you’re against and hey presto, instant motivation!
Must reads for reaching your mid-year goals, doing the hard work and feeling better about life:
- Atomic Habits – James Clear
- The ONE Thing – Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
- Show Your Work – Austin Kleon
What’s on your list of goals? Share them with me ➼ @mollycloverblog