…And How To Set Them In A SMART Way!
If you want to make some big changes in your life, set monthly goals which will lead to annual goals. Here is where you will gain a tremendous amount of personal development and set yourself up for success this year.
Accomplishing monthly goals builds your sense of achievement and gives you confidence to keep going.
Read on for setting monthly goal ideas and how to make them the SMART way.
Let’s dive right into it.
January
- Have a dry month – no drinking alcohol for 31 days
- Cut down screen time and social media by 50%
- Read a book
- Go to sleep with an empty sink every single night
- Journal for the entire month
- Do something that makes me happy every single day
- Talk to a friend every single day
- Define my word of the year
February
- Speak kindly to myself
- Get 8 hours of sleep daily
- Cut out all unnecessary spending for a month leading to more money in your pocket
- Commit to cooking at home for 30 days
- Make an extra $500 this month
- Make it a goal to spread the love around to causes that are close to your heart
- Clear out your closet of things you no longer wear
- Donate a bag of goods to the needy weekly
March
- Cut out negative speak
- Negotiate a bill to save money
- Research what I need to do in order to get a raise
- Practice self kindness on a weekly basis
- Find a podcast to listen to
- Create a movie list of films on my bucket list
- Daily walks
- Create a workspace at home that is pleasant at the same time, clutter free
- Clean out closets and drawers
April
- Try a new recipe
- Wake up an hour earlier every day
- Block out days of rest on my calendar
- Sign up for workout class of choice
- Cut one bad habit out of my life
- Make weekend plans with friends – every weekend
- Wake up every morning saying a positive mantra
- Forgive someone I’ve been holding onto
May
- Create a morning routine and stick to it
- Donate any shoes that I no longer wear
- Donate to a food drive / local church
- Stretch every morning when I wake up
- Don’t order out food for the entire month
- Learn how to meal plan to save time
- Start meditating for at least 5-10 minutes a day
- Go on a photography walk
June
- Open an investment account
- Check my credit report
- Negotiate a bill
- Plan my dream vacation
- Purchase something that will improve my life
- Create a nightly routine and stick to it
- Clean out my purse / wallet
- Clean out my pantry
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July
- Research side hustles that make sense
- Exercise 3x a week
- Write a letter to a family member
- Purchase something that will improve my productivity
- Set up an investment account
- Incorporate prayer into my life
- Start a gratitude journal. Write down all the things that I am thankful for every day
- Spend on something I’ll regret not doing
- Don’t look at any electronics for 30 minutes when I wake up
August
- Don’t look at any electronics after dinner
- Start a food journal
- Create a monthly budget for the house
- Run one mile every single day
- Cut out one cup of caffeine every day
- Incorporate salad into dinner every night
- Set up important medical appointments that I’ve been avoiding
- Shop local
- Meet up with my significant other
- Drink 8 glasses of water daily
September
- Inventory the books in my house
- Inventory the movies/cds/games in my house
- Save 10% of my paycheck this month
- Say yes to every question asked (that is safe)
- Go for a hike
- Prep for my week’s meals on Sunday
- Do something that brings me joy
- Complete a 30 days of yoga challenge
- Do a 30-day squat challenge
- Track your daily food intake for one month
October
- Set your alarm for sunrise everyday
- Stretch for 10 minutes a day
- Try to head to the water once a week
- Get together with friends once a week
- Stay off of streaming services and use that time for more productive choices
- Go to church
- No drinking soda all month
- No junk food all month
- Start doing crossword puzzles or sudoku at night
- Relax on the porch after dinner
November
- Host a game night for friends
- Try a new Pinterest recipe
- Back up my pictures from my computer
- Go through all your apps and make sure they aren’t auto paying for things I don’t want
- Make my bed every morning
- Include family and fill a gratitude jar with heartfelt gratitude
- Practice deep breathing exercises
- Visit the library and pick a new book to read
- Spend a few days at the local coffee shop – change of scenery
December
- Morning walks before the day kicks in
- Create a playlist of my favorite songs
- Clean out the garage
- Start planning for the holidays
- Decorate the house as I see fit
- Cut out bread for two weeks
- Enjoy nature for all that its worth
- Appreciate my family and spend a good amount of time with them
- Setting goals for next year
- Forgive myself
At the end of the year you can see your progress. Thank yourself for having achieved your goals. This is quite an important thing to accomplish.
Once you’ve celebrated that, decide to set goals for next year.
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What Are Some Good Monthly Goals?
Since we are discussing monthly goals, think about a wide variety of aspects in your life to include in your planner or one-sheet. It’s a great way to hold yourself accountable and keep your motivation levels high all year long.
Focus monthly goals on fitness, health, relationship, and business growth. And you can go further still.
Consider entertainment, personal, social, and educational. How about religious and spiritual?
1. Read One Book
Reading opens up the mind to understanding how an idea becomes a motion that moves one to take action. Make a monthly goal to read one book a month.
2. Flex Your Core Muscles More Often
Fitness is an essential monthly goal to healthy living. However, one area that isn’t focused on enough is the core: upper legs, abdominals, and back. It’s here where confidence is physically built. Stand taller because your body is stronger. Get to the core of what matters, and flex your core muscles.
3. Donate Unnecessary Household/Office Items
There is so much stuff that’s accumulated over the years. Instead of drowning in the piles, donate what you don’t use.
4. Volunteer At A Local Charity
When you give to someone else, your gratitude grows. It is so powerful to help those in need, especially in your own community. It’s a great way to give back and feel good.
5. Try A New Recipe
Many people get stuck eating at the same restaurants or cooking the same main meals. Increase your selections by expanding your options on what to eat. Your palate will adopt a variety of new flavors from around the globe.
6. Learn A New Skill
This will broaden your horizons. There is no end to learning and stretching your comfort zone. New skills build character and make you feel good.
7. Invest In Your Spirituality
However you define spirituality, make time to grow deeper in your relationship with the Divine. It starts with you. Here is where you can connect your head and your heart to impact the world that you touch.
8. Get To Know Someone New
Increase your net worth by increasing your network—get to know someone new. The more you diversify your network, the more significant your impact will grow.
9. Conduct A Random Act Of Kindness
Regardless of what’s happening in the world, everyone can give back by surprising someone with a random act of kindness. Put the hostility and fussy attitude in your back pocket, and extend a hand up with a kind act.
10. Practice Forgiveness
If you operate daily from holding onto hurt feelings, it can dilute the good in your life and lead to bitterness. Therefore, you feel less accomplished and more slighted. Let go of what’s not serving you and practice forgiveness.
Consider every aspect of your being – a rounded out version of yourself – and then break it down ten goals a month.
By breaking down the list into monthly goals, it seems much more achievable. Taking them all on at once will just overwhelm you. However, ten things to do in June? Ok… I can roll with it.
What Are Some Ideas For Goals?
These principles, from Dr. Edwin A. Locke along with Dr. Gary Latham, which include clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback, and task complexity, are the necessary components when setting, working towards, and achieving any monthly goals.
Monthly goal ideas require including specific goal setting methods to be successful:
- Clarity: monthly goals should be clear and well-defined.
- Challenge: monthly goals should be achievable but also challenging to you.
- Commitment: you should fully commit to your monthly goals to achieve them.
- Feedback: you should regularly evaluate and reflect on your monthly goals to stay on
track.
- Task complexity: you should give yourself time and space to reach complex monthly goals.
Additionally, research done by psychology professor Dr. Gail Matthews points to an association between writing down your monthly goals and eventual success rather than merely formulating and keeping them in your head.
How Do I Choose My Monthly Goals?
Begin by downloading a free printable monthly goals template a the end of this article so you can write your goals down and keep yourself accountable.
Research continually shows that you’ll be much more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down and if you’re setting SMART goals — easily measurable and a clear habit tracker.
Here’s what this means. These are actionable steps for your monthly goals to be successful:
- Specific
When you make your monthly goals specific, you set yourself up for success. Consider answering who, what, where, when, which and why when getting specific about your monthly goal.
- Measurable
Having a monthly goal that you can measure will help you stay on track and reach any deadlines you set for yourself. Use benchmarks to make sure you are moving forward.
This let’s you know you’re successful and if you need to make adjustments.
- Achievable or Attainable
While you don’t want to choose things that are too easy, you also want to avoid setting monthly goals out of your reach. Set monthly goal ideas you know you can reach.
- Relevant
This goes along with “Attainable”. Make your monthly goals relevant to your life, and realistically achievable, based on your current circumstances. This may be some monthly goal ideas you’ve set before and didn’t achieve because they weren’t realistic at the time. Now, under different circumstances, these monthly goals may be realistic.
- Time-Bound
They must also be monthly goals grounded within a time frame, and they need to be real or tangible in order to make this successful.
Most people set a resolution of something like “I want to lose weight.”
The problem with this phrase is that it’s vague and un-actionable. There’s no habit tracker to measure your progress. Instead, focus and try setting realistic monthly goals for how much weight you want to release and what you want to wear, for example.
Tips for monthly goal success:
- Only choose one goal to focus on per month
- Goal does not have to be big, just one you can work on every day
Goals for Next Year And How to Set Them in a SMART Way
What Are The 5 Personal Goals?
The human brain is an incredible thing, it actively works to conserve energy by habit-izing as many regular activities as possible. Meaning, if you want to make a change in your life, it works best to make it a habit.
These personal monthly goal ideas are all healthy habits that add to a full, happy, balanced life in five areas of personal development. These goal ideas can push you out of your comfort zone, challenge you to grow, and show you just how wildly capable you are.
1. Fitness
- Work out an extra day each week
- Go for a run three times a week
- Stretch in the mornings
- Start walking for 20 minutes around the neighbourhood every evening
- Cut out sugar for a month
2. Relationship
- Write down one thing you appreciate about your significant other every day (at
the end of the month, show them the list)
- Text a different friend every day of the week to see how they’re doing
- Reach out to someone who looks like they need a friend
- Make time for a date night every week
- Call your mom every week
3. Spiritual
- Set aside time to spend in prayer every evening
- Pick a book or two on spiritual growth and make it a goal to finish them this
month (Next month, make it a goal to implement what you learned!)
- Fast once a week for the month
- Wake up earlier than normal to meditate
- Make at least 1 new friend who doesn’t share your beliefs (WITHOUT an agenda
— it’s just healthy)
4. Mindset
- Start a bullet journal and journal every day
- Schedule time for self care at least once a week
- Before you get out of bed, think of at least 3 things you’re grateful for
- Take a Television fast
- Spend time alone for self reflection
5. Work
- Spend 20 minutes a day researching a passion project
- Try a new side hustle for 30 days
- Show up at the office everyday and find a different coworker to offer a genuine
6. compliment
- Begin using time blocking
- Use a physical planner to schedule work activities
- Turn off your phone while you’re working
Monthly Goals For Self Improvement
You are much more likely to have success by making a little progress every day. Keep your goals in focus, be actionable and change your life. After achieving your goals, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Monthly Goal Ideas For Physical Health
- Walk 10k steps/day for a month
- Go to the gym every day for a month
- Try a new exercise for a month such as yoga, pilates, HIIT, jogging, walking, hiking, swimming, biking, weight lifting, or jumping rope
- 30 days of plank exercises
- Lose the love handles challenge
- 30 days of push up exercises
- 30 days of yoga
Monthly Goal Ideas For Diet/Health
- Cut out sugar
- Release a bad habit and choose no caffeine for a month
- Drink more water and monitor your water intake all month
- Eat breakfast every morning
- Replace drinking soda for water for the month
- Quit alcohol for 30 days
- Pack your lunch instead of buying it
- No snacking for 30 days
- Give up fast food for 30 days
- Release 10 pounds in a month
- Try meal prepping
Monthly Goal Ideas For Personal Development
- Read one book a month
- No TV for 30 days
- Make your bed every morning
- Start a bullet journal
- Clean out your closet
- Take up a mindful hobby such as knitting, bullet journaling, or painting
- Volunteer
- Declutter your home
- Learn something new
Self Care Monthly Goals
Monthly goal setting is the bread and butter of personal growth, and these monthly goal ideas are the perfect place to get started.
Customize them to your specific targets and break them down into weekly goals, or take them exactly as they are and give growth a real shot!
Monthly Goal Ideas For Self Care
- Take a tech break from your phone
- Start a gratitude journal
- Keep a mood tracker
- No complaining for 30 days
- Go makeup-free for a month
- Start a creative project in an area you’re not an expert at (Paint something, start
practicing piano, write poetry) and work on it 10 minutes a day
- Spend time alone for self reflection
- Say yes to everything that scares you for a month
- Every time you feel resentful about something, come up with three positive things you can do to create a more desirable outcome in relation to it
Best Free Printable Goal Charts & Templates
Monthly Goals Journal
A journal can be a powerful tool for setting monthly goals and achieving them. You can even think of journaling as a self-coaching session.
Here are the eight steps to follow in order to keep a journal and make it a habit with the express purpose of helping you to achieve your goals:
- Decide what you’re going to use—you can use a notebook, an online journal, or anything else that you feel comfortable with.
- Keep one journal for every major goal.
- Decide on a time that you’re going to set aside each day to write in your journal.
- Commit to writing every day.
- Don’t worry about grammar or punctuation; you’re not creating a literary masterpiece.
- Don’t censor yourself –your journal is just for you. Allow yourself to write whatever you feel.
- Don’t get up from your journalling session until you’ve given yourself an assignment for the next day and you’ve scheduled it in your appointment book.
- After each writing session give yourself a mental pat on the back for the progress you’ve made so far toward the achievement of your goal. Also, feel gratitude for the people who have helped you, and the resources you’ve had access to.
Monthly Goals Template Free
Click here to download a free printable monthly goals template to help you stay on track with setting monthly goals and achieving your goals.
The download includes a standard printable that you can use for setting monthly goals so you can work them into your life on a daily routine.
Long term goals can be broken down into smaller goals setting, leading to achieving success, feelings of motivation, and aligning with how we spend our time to name a few.
Having the tools for goal setting and holding yourself accountable will support you to conquer those goals you set for yourself.
Thank you for reading and aspiring to personal growth. If this article was helpful, please share it with 3 friends ✅ you know who could also benefit by being inspired to set monthly goals.
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