2025 Goal Setting

As 2024 comes to an end, I've been reflecting - thinking of all the memories that have been made this year and all of the things I now wish were different. Whilst I now can't change my 2024 experience, it has given me inspiration of what I hope my 2025 can look like. It is of course important not to dwell on those mistakes and failures, but rather to truthfully evaluate and consider them for a moment, and to then move forwards. I love to go back through my camera roll at this time of year, to witness the moments of joy I captured, to declutter the accidental screenshots and to feel gratitude for everything that's happened to me in 2024. So, as I'd enjoyed this process so much I thought I'd share with you my findings and what I've done to set goals for 2025.

Take the opportunity to reflect on 2024 before you look to 2025, one way to do this would be by answering the following questions:

1. What have I enjoyed this year?

2. What are my best memories from this year?

3. What regrets do I have?

4. What do I wish I could have done differently?

5. What are the biggest lessons I've learnt in 2024?.

Then once you have been genuine and honest with yourself, move forwards and start to create your 2025 goals which will become your vision board. Here's my advice to help you do so.

From my research, the first thing I found was that you can't set too many goals, as this can become overwhelming to a point where none of them end up being achieved and so entirely defeats the point of setting goals in the first place. Only you can make the judgement call of how many goals is too many and at what point there's no chance of any being completed - for me I felt 12 was achievable - a goal for each month of the year (even though I realise some will take much longer than a month and a few much shorter). So, that's the first step, before anything else, decide how many goals you want for 2025.

Once you've decided how many goals, you must break down your life - there are multiple different sources on the web that break our lives down for us, for example I found the seven dimensions of wellbeing were: physical, intellectual, environmental, vocational, social, emotional, and spiritual, compared to another source which reported that it was health, time, purpose, relationships, and learning. So it appears breaking our lives down isn't as simple as it seems, it is actually quite personal, it involves evaluating where our priorities lie and what fundamentally makes up each one of us and when you put it like that, it makes sense that there's not a one size fits all answer. Breaking our lives down depends on a deeply personal contemplation, so it's worth noting down your thought process and ultimate decisions.

Having broken down your life, your now at a stage where you can set as many resolutions as you've decided you'd like to, but I must say this isn't a process to be rushed, jot down your initial thoughts maybe in a notes app on your phone or on a physical piece of paper, then leave it a while and come back to it in a few hours, noticing where your thoughts adjust. Depending on how much time you have available to you, this might be a task to complete over a few days but equally it isn't essential you wait that long. Regardless, it is important that you create goals that are achievable, not something that you can't see yourself being able to complete. I would also insist that when you're writing your goals, you write them starting I want to or I would like to as this way they become more aspirational and you allow yourself to dream big and really think what you do want and would like in this new year.

If you're stuck without any ideas there is plenty of inspiration available online, although if you can come up with goals on your own, the determination to accomplish them will be much greater. I'm now going to give you the space to start to think and come up with your goals for 2025, thinking about goals which encompass all the areas of your life, goals which are going to motivate you next year, goals that will develop you as a person, goals that could adapt your daily habits and goals that can make you the best version of yourself. Try and come up with goals that you'll be able track the progress of and take actionable steps to complete.

1. I want to...

2. I would like to...

3. I want to...

4. I would like to...

5. I want to...

6. I would like to...

7. I want to...

8. I would like to...

9. I want to...

10. I would like to...

11. I want to...

12. I would like to...

Following on from setting the goals themselves, it is time to create a vision board, now a vision board can look different for different people, my personal favourite is a digital vision board which you can set as your phone/tablet/laptop lock screen, so that each time you open your devices you're reminded of/motivated by your goals and so that you don't forget and neglect them (because there's nothing worse than coming to the end of a year and finding you've achieved nothing you wanted to by the end of it).

In order to create the vision board you need to source images to go on them; your looking for images that either depict what your hoping the result of the goal is or images taken by someone in the process of accomplishing the goal - my advice would be to try and avoid images that have real people in them, in favour of silhouettes as seeing somebody else can be disheartening and again be one of the things that get in the way of you fulfilling your goal. My advice is to find around two images for each of your goals but personal preference may favour simply one or as many as can be possibly found (though do be cautious not to overwhelm yourself). Make sure that the images you find fit the aesthetic you like and match your personality and/or lifestyle.

At this point you have a choice, you can either print out all the images you have sourced or you can use a digital platform like Canva or adobe express. Regardless of how you decide to make your vision board, you are going to create a collage using all of the images, take this as an opportunity to get creative and position the pictures in different places to find the format you are most happy with. (Don't worry if you aren't feeling creative, there are lots of digital templates available that you can adjust to your images). You can always use the mock-up I made using free images as inspiration (it's the featured image of this post and can be found on my instagram). Another tip I have found helpful is not overlapping pictures, as then they often get overlooked or missed, instead I prefer to leave equal gaps between each image, giving them their own assured place and importance.

When all the images have been allocated their place and you feel content with how it looks, in roughly the middle you want to add some text, now often people just write 2025 vision board but actually its quite important to claim ownership over it and recognise these goals as your own in order to give yourself the responsibility of executing these goals, which is why I recommend writing "Name's 2025", hence why my exemplar is titled "M's 2025". Make sure you pick a readable font and colour, so that this doesn't get lost among the pictures. The finishing (but optional) touch to creating your vision board is finding a background, so that it isn't plainly white behind each of the images and gives your vision board that visually appealing quality. Then, once it's complete just set it as your wallpaper so you're reminded of it every time you open your device (if completed digitally) or leave it in a prominent place where you will see it everyday (if completed physically).

Some additional action you can take is to return to where you originally wrote your goals down and rank them in order of priority to you so you know where to focus your attention to first and give yourself the momentum to get started on January 1st, and then once you get to tick off your number one priority goal, you'll have the fuel to start working towards your next and so on, in order that by the end of 2025 all the goals you have set now will be implemented.

Once you have completed setting your goals and creating your vision board, I feel it is important to take the time to visualise what you think it will be like when you have accomplished the goal and to visualise the impact that accomplishing the goal could have on your life, take your time, really imagine what it would be like, how it would feel, the impact it would have and just savour that vision, remember it, hold on to it. Because, that's the whole reason you've set these goals, it's the entire motivation to want to complete them so in my opinion it really is the most crucial step in this whole process.

To conclude, I hope you've had a wonderful 2024 and take this chance to think and reflect on what your 2025 could be. If you do make any vision boards, I'd love to see them over on instagram - just give me a tag! Thank you for reading, I hope you have enjoyed my little guide to setting goals and found some use in it. But just remember, you can always set goals, it doesn't just have to be at the end of one year and the start of another, it can be at any point of time.

Hope you have the best week (and the best 2025),

M xx