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With the majority of the holiday insanity behind us, it's time to shift focus to setting goals for the new year. The limbo time between Christmas and New Year's when you don't know what day it is or how many cookies you've eaten is the perfect time to sneak away for a couple hours and plan your best year.

Dr. Laurie Santos, a researcher at Yale University, found that setting goals is a proven way to boost well-being. It's good for your health to set goals!

Achieving goals is a great feeling too. You stand a better chance of achieving your goals when you really develop them effectively from the start. So let's take a look at common mistakes to avoid when setting goals so you can generate powerful goals for 2024. 

Avoid These 6 Mistakes When Setting Goals

1. Not identifying why it's important to you. If you set goals based on what you think you "should" do, your goals are being dictated by societal expectations. They don't have deep meaning to you. So you likely won't be motivated...

"There is nothing holding you back in life more than yourself."

That's the very first sentence in the book The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest. We read the book for book club and during our discussion I asked the members if they agreed with the statement. 100% answered yes.

One of the hardest things to do in this life is to look within to unravel the mess of stress, fear, and emotions that lurk below the surface. But when you want to heal, when you want to get unstuck, you must do the inner work.

Identifying self sabotaging behaviors is critical to your growth and progress. Knowing how to get out of your own way is powerful fuel for becoming your highest self.

Turns out there are many types of self sabotage. I'm super familiar justification. I often say I'm going to stop eating sugar and then order dessert after dinner. That self sabotaging thought process falls into justification. The little voice in my head says, just this one time.

Which of these types of self sabotage resonate...

I love reading self help books because the insights they provide are like therapy. I find such value in understanding how our minds work. In 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do by Amy Morin, I learned that the negative self-talk that infiltrates our minds actually has categories.

These were a-ha moments for me and I think you'll recognize some of these as well. We all fall prey to chastising ourselves, but it's something we can get better at. It takes awareness first. Having the awareness that you're doing it allows you the opportunity to course correct. You can shift your mindset to more positive.

When you're not as consistent with your goals as you had promised yourself, it's important to say what you really want to happen; not what you don't want. Speaking negatively invites negativity. Speaking positively attracts what you actually want. That's because your thoughts become your reality. And self doubt can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So when self doubt starts to creep...

I’m the most boring person you’ll ever meet. My idea of a perfect Friday evening is ordering carry-out, vegging in front of the TV, and going to bed by 10pm.

Now you may think that sounds like adulting…so let me clarify. What I’m watching on TV is Cesar Milan’s: Better Human Better Dog. In case you haven't seen it, it’s about the psychology of training dogs. And as further proof of my boring status, I read books about neuroscience for pleasure. I’m a proud nerd!

That’s a glimpse into my personality and for as long as I can remember, I’ve always been this way. My personality is a homebody who loves to learn. In high school, I preferred to stay home and avoided large parties in favor of being with 1-2 friends.

My junior year of high school, my mom came home from parent teacher conferences and told me that my French teacher wanted me to raise my hand more in class. I was getting an A in the class, but apparently that wasn’t...

We're all guilty of berating ourselves for not sticking to a plan. We loudly critique ourselves for not achieving a goal. The inner monologue goes something like, "You have no willpower! Why can't you just do the damn thing?! You slacked off and are unmotivated."

These horrible things that you say to yourself never provide motivation nor stimulus for improved action. They just make you miserable. So you vow to do better next time and pay lip service to giving yourself grace.

What's really important to make lasting change is to keep your self-talk positive. It's time to show the same compassion you show to your friends to YOURSELF.

Because it's the new year, you're likely focused on your goals. Yet, it's the actions and habits you take consistently that help you achieve your goals. The Kindness Method by Shahroo Izadi provides guidance on the compassionate way to change your habits. The book outlines "maps" that help you plan for situations where you may be tempted to self-sabotage...

One of the strengths of introverts is thinking things through and weighing risks before acting. This serves us in not making hasty decisions. However, we have a tendency to think too much and get stuck in one of the forms of overthinking:

Analysis paralysis

Perfectionism

Rumination

Overthinking is a hidden culprit that contributes to low energy. The mental load of weighing options, what ifs, and making decisions completely wears you out. But you're not doomed to constantly be a prisoner in your head. You can learn strategies to keep the chatter at bay. So what can you do to stop overthinking everything?

Know Your Values

First, know what your values are. It's much easier to make a decision when it's in alignment with your values. For example, I value knowledge, down time, and honesty, amongst other things. So investing in books, courses, and coaches is an easy yes for me because it increases my knowledge and helps me grow.

I also value rest and an unbusy schedule. So I...

When I was growing up and would tell my mom that someone had called me a name or had said something mean to me, my mom would always respond with "just say: sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." And while I understood the concept of not letting mean comments get to me, it didn't work in reality. It still hurt.

I didn't know it then, but what I was really seeking from my mom was empathy. An understanding from her that I felt bad. But instead, my feelings were brushed off...as usual. We just didn't do emotions in my family. While the 5 of us managed to eat dinner together every night, our conversations were never about how we felt. My parents were emotionally unavailable.

This explains why I've been so interested in learning about emotions lately - because I never experienced them. What I thought was an interest in personality has expanded into understanding emotional regulation and behavior.

The weird thing is that I don't remember my childhood before...

Once you've discovered that you're an introvert, it's time to start shaping your reality according to your true nature.

Introversion is your energetic trait, meaning you get drained by socializing and need to recharge your energy by being away from people.

Real talk: being scared and procrastinating due to fear or anxiety are not introverted traits. They're human emotional responses that we can change. Successful introverts are scared, but take action anyway. Fear and worry do not hold them back, nor are they defined by it.

Just as societal conditioning will lead you to believe that introverts are unfriendly and uninterested, the popular belief about success is that it's achieved when you have a large house, a vacation home, a couple expensive cars, and the list of material possessions goes on.

Yet how you define success is unique to you. Most people define success as making a certain amount of money. That's a goal more than a measure of success. And when that goal is reached, what...