This is it my friends! That time of the year where we set big, bold goals for ourselves and then don’t look at them again until the end of the year, and pretend that they didn’t matter anyways or that life got busy or, oh hey, there’s a pandemic still!

Kidding aside, setting goals is a great thing. It allows us to intentionally choose what our future could look like, versus being reactive and taking whatever the universe decides to give us. In other words, if we’re not being intentional, then it must mean we’re living unintentional lives… and I’ll venture to say we don’t want that.

This is the point in the email I make several shameless plugs. Read my last email about what lessons we learned from last year, in order to address them in 2022. Also, you gotta read the Epic Life Planner (including a free downloadable spreadsheet), which explains how to take your 100 bucket list items and which 4 to focus on each year.

Simply put, each year, your goals should have at least 1 from each of these categories:

Adventure – Such as seeing the pyramids of Egypt or an experience like climbing Mt Kilimanjaro.

Achievement – Something tangible produced through effort, like writing a book or starting a business.

Skills – Such as learning another language or playing a music instrument.

Taking in what I learned from 2021, I’ve landed on the below personal goals for 2022:

Venture Out (Achievement). Obviously this has to make the list! For 2022, the plan is to make it breakeven, maybe even finally break a profit!

Reading (Achievement). Definitely one of the things that’s made me happiest in 2021 was reading 20 books! Keep in mind that I normally read 0 books! Success is reading at least 15 books in 2022, so if you have any recommendations, send them over!

Peak performance (Skill). Ok, ok, it’s not exactly a skill, but I’ve had too many lingering injuries in 2021. And if my mind and body is not in peak performance, then I won’t be able to enjoy adventures nor keep on adventuring when I’m old. Success is body and mind feeling sharp in 2022.

Outdoors (Adventure). I don’t know exactly where, given this pandemic, so I’ll simply say when we travel, I’ll push to maximize the outdoors. Maybe I’ll get a chance to take a mountaineering course, maybe it’ll be to a national park, or maybe it’ll just be in my backyard camped out. The metric I’ll set to say success is 4 events.

The takeaway is easy, just have fun imagining what you could and wanted to always achieve in life. Then take one step toward it.