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Are Your Goals a Priority?

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Are your habits a priority? Simple questions to ask yourself to find out | ChocolateMusings.com #habits #bulletjournal #goals

Are your goals a priority? How can you tell? Are you consistently meeting your goals? If not, read on.

In this post, I’ll show you how to determine if the habits and goals you set for yourself are really priorities by following the self-assessment I take and show you the planner layout page I use.

Are Your Goals a Priority?

If you make empty promises without the intent to follow up and do the hard things to accomplish your goal, then I hate to tell you the bad news. Your goal or habit is not really a priority.

Reflecting on your actions will show you whether or not your goal or intended habit is actually a priority in your life or if you’re set up for failure.

A Sure Sign Your Goals are NOT a Priority: Making Empty Promises

Life is full of empty promises that we never intend to keep. We make them to acquaintances and friends. Sure, we’ll get together. I’ll give you a call. We should have dinner sometime. We neglect to set a date, time, or follow-up because we don’t intend to keep the agreement.

Do you also make empty promises to yourself? Have you ever promised that you would start a diet next Monday only to find that it’s #nationaldoughnutday? And decide that you should begin your well-intended diet the next Monday instead?

Are your habits a priority? Simple questions to ask yourself to find out | ChocolateMusings.com #habits #bulletjournal #goals

What Changed the Commitment Rollercoaster?

I was always on this rollercoaster of hollow commitments to myself and never got anywhere. After reading several goal-setting and habit-forming books, there was one thought that kept recurring. All of these goals and habits had to become a priority to become an accomplishment or a formed habit.

Here is the Harsh Truth

The harsh truth is this: your actions show what is really a priority in your life. If it’s a priority to lose weight, you will either skip the doughnuts or plan carefully so you can have the right amount of doughnut and still keep your promise to yourself. Most days, I skip the sweets – and guess what? I’m ok. 

What are Your Empty Promises?

What things in your life do you empty promise – either to yourself or to those around you? Take a hard look at how you spend your time and the actions you take when faced with a hard choice. You’ll soon find out if your goal is really a priority or if it’s just a wish.

What If You’re Not Perfect?

Keep in mind that not every day will be perfect. And most days you’ll have some sort of set back. This is a matter of assessing your overall intentions and actions. This is not an opportunity to rip yourself apart and tear you down. It’s an opportunity to think long and hard about the positive actions you’re taking. Then build on those rather than bash yourself about what you do to hinder your progress.

Goal Example

For instance, I want to learn how to do chalkboard lettering so I can go to other businesses and pitch my talents (it’s a thing). Well, the harsh truth is a big fat NO – I am not making this a priority. 

But here’s what I have done:

I found a really great chalkboard to practice and have all the materials to practice, and I look at it every day. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I can build on it. If I focus on the positive actions I already have, then all I have to do is change the negative items.

So this is what I would write as my plan to make this goal a priority:

Block out a time every day (or week) to practice chalkboard lettering. Decide which materials I like best to start, but don’t eliminate any upfront. Find some Skillshare classes that teach chalkboard lettering. Use quotes from my monthly quote page so I can have something to practice. Reassess progress in a month.

Continuous Changes to Make Your Habit a Priority

When you do an assessment, it’s not once and done, you make corrections, come back and reassess. What new positive actions have you added to achieve this goal? What obstacles do you face? And the Harsh Truth is always there to give a reality check.

Then set your plan, refocus your attention and energy, and go out and work toward those goals again.

Here’s the Planner Page I created to help me assess whether or not I was serious about the goals I set. You can recreate this in your planner (tag me @chocolatemusingscreates – I’d love to see it!).

Are your habits a priority? Bullet Journal spread with questions to find out| ChocolateMusings.com #habits #bulletjournal #goals

Goal Priority Assessment:

GoalPositive Actions I TakeActions that Hinder my GoalHarsh Truth – am I making this a priority,
Yes or No?
Weight Loss – Weighing in every day
– Recording everything I eat
-Using an app to track everything
-Sticking within my recommended daily allotment 		-Snacking too much
-Getting stuck in a rut and not finding healthy alternatives when I want a snack or meal
-Going to the store hungry
-Not planning meals		 Yes, but I could do better. The goal is to change my eating habits permanently and affect the rest of my life. Refocus and keep going!

The Plan:

  • Order groceries online so I don’t add snack items as I wander the aisles.
  • Do not shop hungry!
  • Add daily walks back into my schedule.
  • Use my bullet journal to plan meals & shopping lists.
  • Make a list of healthy alternatives and post it on the pantry/fridge door (maybe it will help the kids, too!).
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is find-more-arrow-down-e1569382617571-300x71.png

Want to know more about my weight loss & health journey? I share snippets from my planner and daily activities in my quest. Click on the image above

Other Examples of My Goals in Need of a Priority Assessment:

  • Running a creative business.
  • Creating a how-to doodle book.
  • Getting out of debt.
  • Replace the income from my job.
  • Create a lettering course.
  • Go-to Chalkboard letterer for local businesses.
  • Clutter-Busting (read post #1 & #2)

Here’s your question: What do you want to do?

How to Get Started

What’s the big goal in your life you keep chasing but never seem to get any closer to the end? Follow my example and write down your goal, the things you do consistently to achieve your goal. Then admit to yourself what you struggle doing. Finally, what does the harsh truth say?

Remember: this is not a time to beat yourself up. Capitalize on your positive actions (even if it’s a recurring thought) and build on those.

Here are some books I’ve read on organizing, decluttering, and habits. I’d love a recommendation and add it to my list. Let me know if you have more to add in the comments below.  

 

How to Learn a New Skill in 5 Easy Steps – and Keep Your Life, Too

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5 Steps to learn a new skill (and keep your life, too) | ChocolateMusings.com #habits #skills #talents

How to Learn a New Skill – all it takes is a small commitment every day

How to learn a new skill: believe it or not, it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of time every day to learn something new. In reality, all it takes to learn a new skill is a small commitment, every day to develop a new talent or start a new hobby.

What is one thing you want to do but you haven’t started doing it, yet? Maybe it’s because you don’t feel like you have time or it feels too complicated or any other excuse you give yourself.

Practice Makes Progress - 5 Ways to Develop a New Talent or Skill | ChocolateMusings.com #practicemakesprogress #practice #skill

Learning a new skill or practice won’t happen immediately. My kids always say, “I’m not good at that.” My response is either “neither was I until I practiced a lot” or another one of my favorite responses: “well, you’ll have to practice to improve.” Learning a new skill is like riding a bike or learning to swim.

Buying a new bike doesn’t guarantee you’ll keep your balance; it requires practice, practice, practice. It requires skill development and sometimes some scraped knees. But it always requires you get back up and keep going.

Examples of Skills I Want to Learn or Habits to I Want to Develop

  • Learn to create a variety of lettering formats
  • Journal Everyday
  • Write
  • Illustrate books
  • Paint Murals
  • Watercolor Paint
  • Paint realistic art
  • Draw from memory
  • Draw Faces
  • Sell my art
  • Blog full time
  • Keep my house clean
  • Learn something new
  • Watercolor plants
  • Create quotes in awesome layouts
  • Paint florals
  • Photography
  • Write Comics
  • Sing

When I was learning to brush letter, I committed at least 15 minutes per day to the activity. Investing just 15 minutes per day removes a lot of excuses. It feels more like a bite-sized piece every day than eating the whole elephant at once.

ChocolateMusings.com Shop - Find it in the shop!

Make Your Own List

Go ahead and get your notebook out or a scrap of paper then brainstorm a list of things that you want to learn. Don’t edit your list right now; write down all the things you want to do. Don’t worry about how long your list is, keep writing until you feel like you’ve listed everything.

Once you’ve listed all the ambitions in your life, choose one (maximum two) items from your list to practice every day for a short amount of time.

Decide which one will capture your focus. You can’t learn everything all at one time. For one thing, the time commitment is certainly not feasible. For another thing, you’re probably overwhelmed by your list already.

Choose One Thing

The above list of skills I want to learn/habits to develop to do isn’t comprehensive by any means, but even that shortlist is overwhelming when it comes to doing them all at once.

Trying to learn everything at once quickly becomes overwhelming. The key to learning a new skill is to focus on one thing at a time. I used to be an advocate for multitasking, but I have learned over time that splitting my efforts is certainly not as effective as focusing on one thing at a time.

I’m not saying to neglect everything else in your life, in fact, contrary to that. Choose one as a focus. I’m not going to neglect cleaning my house while I learn a new skill other than cleaning, but the books I read, the research I do, my general focus will be on creating a different skill instead.

If You Can’t Decide Which One

If you can’t decide, try this: choose the first thing on your list. Think about spending the next 3 months, devoting your time every day to learning that skill. How does that one make you feel? Were you excited or secretly disappointed that it wasn’t another item on your list? If you were disappointed, choose the thing that you thought about doing instead, that’s probably the one you really want to try.

Muscle Memory

You’re creating ‘muscle memory.’ It’s like going to the gym for your brain and hands. Working out a little every day is better than working out in one long session on Saturdays. It creates a more established habit and doesn’t take an entire day to catch up.

If you give yourself just 15 minutes per day, you’ll be amazed at how much you improve at this new skill. A short amount of time every day is better than a big chunk of time – especially when you have to train your hands or mind to do something different like lettering or drawing.

You’ll make better progress if you do a little every day. And you’re not asking yourself to eat huge chunks, which is easier to swallow.

Now Commit to Learning Your New Skill

Just like my cleaning/decluttering regimen, set a specific time for when you intend to do your practice every day.

How to Commit:

Now that you’ve decided which skill you will practice, there are a few things that will help you to commit it to memory. They are simple things, but very useful.

  1. Set a time
  2. Write it down
  3. Block it out on your calendar
  4. Show up & Practice
  5. Every. Single. Day

Set your intentions for real then commit to yourself or tell someone else if you need accountability. Tell them what you are going to do and when you are going to do it.

Comment below, which is the one thing you are going to do & when you are going to do it every day.

5 Steps to learn a new skill (and keep your life, too) | ChocolateMusings.com #habits #skills #talents

My Commitment

For me, I am going to write for my blog for 15 minutes every day at 8:30 am before I go to work. If I need to, I will put in headphones to drown out the extra noise and reduce distractions. My work doesn’t have to be perfect, and I need to show up and do it. Every. Single. Day.

Where can you learn more about creating a habitual creative practice?

I love SkillShare – an online learning environment with hundreds of courses you can take to learn new techniques and enhance your skills. Sign up for a free trial, take some classes and see what else you learn.

365 Day Project
You Can Draw Anything!
Stick to it: How to Maintain a Creative Practice

If you already use skillshare – are there any classes you’ve enjoyed? I’d like to know.

Want to start handlettering? Check out my post for beginning lettering supplies.

My Plan to Win the Daily Battle with Decluttering and Stuff #1

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My Plan to Win the Daily Battle with Decluttering and Stuff

I battle with stuff every day. The things that I have in my house and my life – all the minutia. All the stuff. Stuff from Target, stuff from Walmart, stuff from Costco…stuff we’ve had for years, just stuff. I wanted to figure out a way to deal with all the things, and manage it going forward.

Last year, I read Marie Kondo’s book – before she was on Netflix – and it spurred me to clean out my closets, drawers, kid’s toys, kitchen, I even roll my socks to this day… but evidently, I went wrong somewhere. I still have too much stuff for my 3-bedroom, 2 bath house. 3 kids and 2 adults have a lot of stuff.

Love of ‘Stuff’ at its Limit

Don’t get me wrong, I love my art supplies and notebooks, but I feel like I’ve hit the ceiling. A limit. And yet when I walk into a supply store, the intoxicating smell of bound paper, the crackle of a package of pens lure my senses into insisting that I need yet another item despite the lack of space in my house.

I read books on happiness, books on habits, books on decluttering my life, and yet, I still can’t find the answer to my problem.

The Answer

But today, I think I found the answer to my problem. I am not specific enough, and I don’t put decluttering or ‘finding joy’ in my things into regular practice. I read the advice and yet don’t carry through on most of it. 

Decluttering is not a one-time event. The once and done is a nice concept, but I know now that it’s not permanent. It’s a battle fought constantly. Clutter and stuff want to make my home it’s home, and the tiny humans living under my roof don’t help one bit. In fact, I created a planning spread ages ago with a similar idea, but never put it into regular practice.

Clutter Definition

Here’s where I need to define clutter. I define clutter as anything that habitually gets out of place OR an overabundance of things without a proper home or spills over into other locations. Some people might say it just gets messy, but the mess makes me feel cluttered, inside and out and I don’t know about you, but feeling disorganized on the inside makes me feel restless and ornery all day long.

I don’t want to continually feel like I need to get rid of stuff. If I can put a stopper on the intake, I still have to deal with the items we want to keep. Once I pare down the extra items in my house, I still have things that creep out of their designated places.

My aha moment – combining the advice from two sets of books and combining them into one: decluttering + habit creation = make decluttering a habit.

Working on a Solution

I’ve figured out the problem, and now I’ll go to work on creating a habit for daily decluttering. I’m excited to show you what I’m working on – and I’ll give you a sneak peek!

In the next decluttering post, I’ll step you through how to fill out the declutter habit plan printable.

question mark - chocolatemusings.com

I’d love to know! What do you do to keep yourself ‘sane’ and deal with all the clutter and mess every day?

Creating Habits: Dishes aren’t a Dirty Word Anymore! + Video

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Last Month’s Review

For last month I am happy to announce I fulfilled one of my ‘habits’ every day of the month. I posted on Instagram every day! (Lol) I’m so proud of myself. Creating habits is not an easy feat as you can see from my other habits on the tracker.

Dishes – Not a Dirty Word Anymore

One habit surprised me: Dishes. In September, I posted that ‘dishes’ was the d-word and apologized for saying it so many times. Admittedly, as long as I can remember I have hated doing the dishes.

When it was my turn for Sunday dishes growing up, I would spend as much time dawdling as I could. Then I would stand forever and wash the dishes until my legs itched (we went a long time without a dishwasher – so I had to do the dishes by hand for what seemed like most of my life – though it probably wasn’t that long). I HATED doing the dishes.

Patience and Diligence

Months of tracking and trying to improve have paid off. In December, I consistently did the dishes 26 days of 31, and I am happy to say that it has become a habit I do it almost without thinking. My kids are even getting into the habit of checking if the dishes are clean and if not, they load their dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

We Were Both Losers

Defeating this habit of NOT doing the dishes was actually quite the undertaking. Now it is one of the most consistent habits in my tracker. My husband and I used to play a game of who could stand the dishes in the sink the longest. Sometimes I would win and sometimes he would win. But in all honesty, we were both losers in this game. This is a huge reason why I decided to track it in the first place.

A Shift in My View Point – Creating Habits

Another thing that has completely changed the way I do things: 10 Minutes. If you haven’t seen this post, please read it, bookmark it, pin it and put it in your bullet journal. LIFE CHANGING.  Unless you have your life completely together and you never have a sock left on the floor by one of your kids or a speck of dust lingering on your furniture – read it. I can tell you that it has completely changed the way I think and the way I do things around my house.

You know that bin full of broken crayons that the kids never use or the shoe bin that never gets cleaned out but is always in the back of your mind as an unfinished task? Oh, wait, those things are now regularly done. I do think I need to create a secondary 10 minutes task list, so I give priority to other tasks.

This idea is not a revolutionary way of thinking as far as the world goes, but for me, the impact was substantial. I included things on my 10-minute mind map that I often neglect. Such as syncing my finances. Self-care has not been so much a burden. I put make-up on more consistently because I feel like I can take a couple of moments just for me.

I signed up for SkillShare and listen to classes as I cook dinner.

This one little switch in my mindset has been utterly fundamental for me to feel more accomplished and to get more done in the day-to-day. I will even use it to calm down if I have dealt with an obstinate 8-year-old or an emotional 6-year-old and my temper is flaring. As you might imagine, I could go on and on.

Habit Check Progress for the Month – Sometimes it’s the Journey Not the Speed

Now then – here’s my habit check for the month. Probably my most favorite design of the month. I LOVE how the moped turned out. And then I am not sure if I read the quote somewhere, and it was in my subconscious – but I thought of it one day when I was creating my habit page. Sometimes it’s the journey, not the speed. I think it pairs perfectly with the moped and with creating habits. Like I said above, I started in September making dishes a habit instead of a fight with my husband.

It didn’t change overnight. Creating habits takes time. Since I have been patient with myself and my progress, the speed has increased. But the journey was enjoyable – and that may be the best part.

Circle Mood Tracker

The circle mood tracker is one of my most favorite creations ever. I’ve tried out several compasses and tools for creating circles, and the helix tool is my favorite – because it has the degrees around the outside.  I realized that a lot of people out there who may not know how to create a circle. Guess what? I am working on some supplies for you. I’ve decided to scale back my weekly posts so I can create some additional resources for you.

I like the circle tracker because it takes up less space. I added a weigh-in result (TWI) and a weekly tracker for cleaning those spaces that need a little more care. Then I added a blog & video post tracker to the side. Next month, I plan on keeping the blog post tracker but moving the weekly tracked off the tracker page and to the weeklies.

creating habits, mid-month habit check, sometimes it's the journey not the speed

What I’m Going to Change

After I tabulated last month’s results, I decided that for March I may switch back to a color instead of a number; only because it was not easy to count and average all the numbers. But I do like the look of using gray/black to complete the trackers.

Creating habits takes a lot of work! I’ve decided that I need a plan to carry out the habit. A when, why, where – questionnaire of habits. For instance: what do I mean by ‘water intake’? I have worked on drinking more water, but I didn’t define whether it’s one cup or 8 to mark it off. It’s easy to ‘cheat’ and just mark something off if I do it half-way, but I try to acknowledge my true intentions.

I have learned that I have to be patient with myself and developing a specific routine around forming the habit is essential. For February, I think I may remove dishes from my tracker – just to see if it is a real habit now or if I still need the thrill of marking it off in my habit tracker.

So…Have 10 Minutes? A Challenge.

Using my 10-minute method, before I start next month’s habit tracker, I will: write down expectations of the habit defining the when, where, and what so I can honestly improve and make it into a habit.

Here is my challenge for you:

Do something for you or do something that has nagged at you. You don’t have to get it done, just spend 10 minutes and do part of it. Then when you have dinner in the oven, and there are 10 minutes on the timer, do a little more.  Do you have a habit that you are trying to form? As you can see, I have lots to work on, but with a plan and around 10 planned minutes, I bet it would make a difference in how full my tracker is. We will see what happens next mid-month habit check – creating habits is a long-term investment.

By the way, I have had people tag me on Instagram after seeing my post on Pinterest and tell me that it changed their lives too. If you try it out, use #InMy10Minutes and tag me @ChocolateMusingsCreates either on Instagram and completely change the way you task. I’d love to see it and feature you.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully and don’t be afraid to find your inner muse.

~Tricia