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Welcome!
Before you begin, I recommend printing out this workbook and completing it
by hand (or copying each question into a notebook). When we write things
down by hand, we’re more likely to remember them and will often experience
new insights and perspectives too.

I’m Hannah, founder of Becoming Who You Are, and

I’m passionate about sharing tools and resources
people can use to create their best experience of
life.

Over the last few years, I’ve heard from a lot of

people who struggle with goals. They feel
overwhelmed, even slightly triggered, at the idea of
setting goals. They get into a cycle of setting and
forgetting, then beating themselves up when they don’t
spend their time doing what they want to be doing. Or, they knock their goals
out of the park only to feel deflated when they realise all those things they
thought would change in their life, haven’t.

Most of these challenges stem from one simple but important thing: how they
think about goals and their reasons for committing to them.

Here’s something we tend to forget when it comes to goals and self-

kindness:

We can be self-accepting and still have things we want to do and ways in

which we want to grow. We can believe we are enough and also want to
explore our capabilities and potential further.

The goals we set from a place of believing we are already enough are a lot
more fulfilling, life-enriching and worthwhile than the goals we strive to
achieve because we think we need that particular thing to feel good about
ourselves.

As I write this, it’s the new year and everyone and their neighbour is talking
about goals, habits, resolutions and all that jazz. And with that kind of chatter
sometimes comes a little whisper, the breeze of an implication:

“You are not enough,” “You should be more than you already are.”

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Sometimes, there’s the voice that quivers in fear at the idea of not setting
goals. Because what if, in the meantime, everyone else gets a promotion, or
moves to Tahiti, or finds the love of their life, and leaves you in the dust?

Then there’s the voice that reminds you that, if you’re going to call yourself a
responsible adult, you should really get better at things like jogging and
interior decorating. That’s what adults do, right?

Then, there’s the voice that says “If only you had X (more money, nicer
house, smaller waistline, fancier car), then you’d feel happy, confident and
proud of your life."

These are the voices that most often pop up when it comes to goals, and
these are the voices rooted in “not enough."

Needless to say, setting goals out of fear and scarcity is not conducive to
happiness and life satisfaction. Nor does it lead to particularly joy-filled or
inspiring goals.

This workbook introduces a different way to think about goals—one that’s

based on passion, fulfilment and joy rather than obligation, fear and
insecurity. In the following pages, you’ll find journaling prompts and
exercises to help you create goals that truly lift you up.

This version of goal-setting hinges on the fact that we have things we want to
do and experience in our lives, and we are already enough. Right here, right
now today. It’s about recognising the fears, anxieties and internal scripts that
have held us back and shifting them with empathy, kindness and a hefty
dose of courage, instead of self-recrimination and “try harder.”

Because goals are far more fun, fulfilling and meaningful when they come
from a place of already feeling enough.

Let’s begin.

This workbook is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license. This means
you’re free to share it, crediting Hannah Braime as the author, but you can’t change it in any way or use it
commercially. Thanks for respecting.

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Part 1: Reflect and Review
Work through the following prompts in one sitting. Allow an hour or so to do
these exercises.

Start with the following, reflecting on the year gone by:

This year, I felt proudest of...

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This year, I acted with integrity when...

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This year, I did the right thing when...

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This year, I did all these things to help the people around me...
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This year, I learned this important lesson about myself and the world...
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This year, people said the following meaningful things to me...

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This year, I imperfectly but courageously embodied my core values of…

(N.B. not sure what your core values are? Find out here)

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____________________________________________________________________
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Three of my most heart-warming memories from this year are...

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When I think of a time when I felt most wholeheartedly myself this year, I think
of...
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That’s it for the review! Stretch out, grab a drink, and let’s move on...

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Part 2: Start where you are
Let’s start with a general overview of your world right now. Before answering the
questions below, click here to download Say Hello to Your Future Self and
complete the workbook.

Which two to three areas of your life you’d love to focus on shift closer to a 10
this year?
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What needs to be addressed?

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Which area of life feels like the most uncomfortable to address right now, and
why? (hint: often the most uncomfortable things are those that need most
attention!)
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Which area feels like the most exciting to address, and why?
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What is the number one thing that, if you started doing it this year, would have a
positive impact on your life?
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What is the number one thing that, if you stopped doing it this year, would have
a positive impact on your life?
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Imagine you’re sitting here one year from now and everything during the past 12
months has exceeded your expectations. What in particular do you feel

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proudest about?
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Based on your answers to the questions above, write down 3-5 tentative goals
for the year ahead. We’ll shore these up over the next couple of sections. For
each goal you write down, also make a note of how you want or expect to feel
once you achieve that goal (don’t skip this—it’s important!)
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Part 3: The Principles of Setting Feel-Good Goals
The taller a tree is going to grow, the deeper its roots need to be. The higher the
building, the lower the foundations. In this section, we’re going to cover those
roots: the principles of feel-good goals.

1. Feel-good goals start with asking “What do I really want?”

One of the most common mistakes we make with goal setting is this:

We commit to goals we think we should be working towards without stopping

to ask what we really want, or what’s best for us right now.

With every decision we make and action we take, our motivations fall into one of
two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivations include those which
are to do with your fulfilment, integrity and growth. Extrinsic relate to what you
think you should do, or how you think other people will perceive you. The focus
might be on wanting to impress or please other people. Alternatively, it might be
on making certain decisions to avoid conflict with others.

With any goal, it’s natural to have a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic, but it’s
important to make sure the former outweighs the latter. Get conscious about all
the reasons you want to do what you’re doing and focus on the things that align
with your personal values and needs.

2. Feel-good goals sometimes look more like challenges than goals.

A lot of us inadvertently self-sabotage our most important goals with the weight
of pressure and expectation. As soon as we fall behind with a goal, we start
feeling guilty and cross with ourselves for not sticking to our original plan. This
can lead to all kinds of unhelpful self-talk that is more harmful than helpful to our
eventual aim.

Rather than thinking of goals as the be all and end all, try thinking of them as a
series of challenges. For most of us, saying “I’m challenging myself to write a
novel this year,” feels more inspiring than “I have a goal to write a novel this
year.” It’s a subtle difference, but can be surprisingly effective.

If you’re struggling to gain momentum with your goal, you can also try turning it
into a 30-day or 60-day challenge. One or two months will fly by in an instant,
and you’ll be surprised at the results of your daily diligence.

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 3. Feel-good goals focus on what you can control.

Where we place our focus has a huge impact on our experience working
towards goals. This can play out in two ways. The first is that we try to control
things that are way out of our realm. An example of this is a goal like “I want to
find love this year.” As meaningful and important as that goal is, we are only
50% of that equation. It also requires someone to love us back, which is
ultimately beyond our control. Things we can control in this context include:
- How we show up in social interactions
- How many extra-curricular activities we get involved in
- How many dates we go on
- How much we work on our own self-awareness and self-responsibility for
when we do meet someone with that “click."
And so on.

The second way we misalign our focus on what we can control is by giving too
much control away.

A common example of this is waiting to be found, recognised or discovered. For

example, if you want to start blogging, taking the “if I build it they will come”
mentality, setting up a blog and expecting people to find and flock to your
fledgling website isn’t going to work. You need to make it as easy as possible
for people to find you and actively pursue opportunities to get your writing in
front of more eyes.

With every goal you set this year, check in with yourself:

Are you focusing on what you can control without giving too much power away
or trying to manage things that are out of your sphere of responsibility?

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Part 4: Thinking big
Start with what makes you happy right now. An important piece in creating
goals from a place of enough involves ditching the “When I have X, then I’ll
feel happy/confident/secure/everything else I want to feel."

Return to the tentative goals you wrote down earlier and focus on the
feelings you named. For each feeling, think back to the last time you felt that
way. What were you doing? Who were you with? What was it about that
circumstance that left you feeling that way? Finally, how can you cultivate
more of that feeling in your life today?
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Select 3-4 of the most exciting and attractive goals from your tentative list
above. For each goal ask yourself:

What are my reasons for wanting to work towards this goal? (be as honest
with yourself as possible here.)
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Out of these reasons, which are to do with your happiness, satisfaction and
growth (intrinsic), and which are related to what you think you should do, or
how you think other people will see you (extrinsic)?
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Are you creating this goal from a place of scarcity or a place of security? Is
this goal on the list because without it you feel like you’re falling behind,
need to do this thing to feel worthy, and are not quite enough as you are? Or
is it on the list because you’re excited for the challenge, curious to explore
the edges of your potential, and open to the new experience? If the answer
is “both,” what needs to change in the way you’re thinking about this goal to
be able to approach it from a place of security?
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How will you know when you’ve reached this goal?

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Who do you need to become to make this goal a reality? What qualities will
you need to embody? How would someone who has achieved this goal think
about themselves, behave and live their life?
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What makes this goal perfect for you at this point in your life right now?
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And what makes you the perfect person to start working towards this goal
right now? List all the reasons you are absolutely capable of achieving this,
nothing is too big or too small!
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What has really worked for you when you’ve achieved goals in the past? How
can you use that this time around?
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How can you phrase this goal in an clearly actionable and timed statement?
(e.g. “By December 31st of this year, I will have written the first draft of my
novel)
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Work through the questions above for each goal you’d like to focus on this year.
Congratulations, you have your goals! Check in with yourself: how does it
feel to write these down?

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Part 5: Setting Your Roots
The taller a tree is going to grow, the deeper it’s roots need to be. The higher
the building, the lower the foundations. In this section, you’re going to set
your roots.

1. Identify your Conditions of Enoughness

The phrase conditions of enough-ness comes from Jennifer Louden. Find out
more about this phrase here.

What is good enough? Too many of us set the bar at “perfection” and base
how we feel about ourselves on the fact that we—unsurprisingly—fall short.
So this year, ask yourself: what is good enough for me? (As Jen points out,
those last two words are especially important.)

A year is a long time, and you can accomplish a lot during the next 12
months, but it’s not infinity. All being well, you will also have next year, and
the year after that. That’s not a reason to rest on your laurels and defer your
dreams, but it helps put perfection in perspective. You don’t need to do all
the things this year, nor do you need to reach perfection and mastery before
your time. Instead, focus on what is good enough for you in relation to that
goal and keep your eye on the right prize.

2. Create your support network.

No one achieves substantial goals on their lonesome, so this is the time to ditch
any ideas about doing everything on your own. The same goes for any fears
that, if you enlist support, it’s somehow cheating.

There are two kinds of support that lend themselves to feel-good goals:

1. Internal support
2. External support

External support is the most clearcut, so let’s start with that. Who in your world
can help and/or support you as you reach your goal? Who do you need (and
who do you perhaps need to not talk about this with?) In her excellent book
Overcoming Underearning, Barbara Stanny defines what she calls ‘supporters’
and ‘naysayers’. If you’ve already worked through my free ebook How to
Overcome the 5 Most Common Blocks to Authenticity, this exercise will be
familiar but it’s worth repeating in this context.
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According to Barbara, four kinds of supporters are important in your community:

1. True Believers: These are people who recognise your potential and celebrate
even the smallest success. They are the ones who say “Go for it” and are your
personal cheerleaders.

2. Confidantes: These are the people you turn to when you need a sounding
board. They are the people you can talk to about your dreams, goals and
progress, your trials and tribulations.

3. Way Showers: Way Showers are role models. They might be people you know
directly, or people you watch from a distance. These people have done what you
want to do. They say “You can do it too, let me show you how.”

4. Messengers: Messengers are information-bringers. They are the connectors, the

referrers and the people that can provide you with leads that will further your
progress towards your goals. These are people who say “I can help.”

There is also a category called the naysayers. These are people who are not
supportive of your goals, not because they are bad goals but because of their own
mindset or baggage.

It’s important to remember that just because someone disagrees with us doesn’t
mean they’re automatically a naysayer. In fact, we need people who will disagree
with us when we’re wrong and question us when they don’t understand what we’re
doing. Being surrounded by ‘yes’ people, who agree with us 24/7 can be just as
harmful to our progress as having no one at all. Naysayers go beyond this kind of
disagreement, however; they are ego-invested in us being a certain way, and
aren’t respectful of our individuality.

It’s not our job to convince the naysayers. Instead, we’re much better served
focusing on cultivating a community that is rich in all four categories of supporters.

Fill out the table below. Include everyone who has some meaning or significance in
your personal and professional life who could support you with your goals. If you
run out of space, grab a pen and paper and keep going. At the bottom, write down
the total for each column.
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As you complete this exercise, be mindful of the people who are supposed to go in
the supporter category by virtue of the relationship they have with us (best friends,
partners, parents, well-meaning extended family, managers, mentors etc.), and
separate out ‘supposed to’ from ‘in reality’. This table is for your eyes only, so
forget about being polite or offending people: look at how the people in your
community actually behave.

True Believers Confidantes Way Showers Messengers Naysayers

Now let’s move on to internal support. This is about how much you support
yourself; both in the way you talk to yourself and in the supportive habits you
cultivate in other areas your life outside the goal itself. This is your goal, and no
one is going to care about it as much as you do. No one is going to give you
permission to go for it, so it doesn't serve you to wait for that. Be your own
mentor, or find someone who is willing to take on that role for you.

It’s also important to remember that how we do anything is how we do

everything. If we want to give ourselves the best chance of reaching our big
goals, we need to cultivate helpful habits in other areas of our life that are going
to support our endeavours.

As a final exercise today, take a few moments to complete this exercise and
create your own When Life Works list.

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Part 6: Further Reading
The topic of setting and reaching goals is huge, and I’ve only covered one tiny
aspect of it here (how to set goals from a place of “good enough”). Here is a list
of further reading that will help you continue your journey and reach for the stars
this year:

Books

The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

The Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Motivation for Creative People by Mark McGuinness

How to Raise Your Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden

Articles

Are Your Goals Making You Lonely?

Conditions of Enoughness or the Art of Building Your Truer Life

Stop Making New Year’s Resolutions, Do This Instead

Your Goals Are Overrated (N.B.: colourful language in this one)

How to Achieve Your Goals

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Thanks for reading!

I hope this workbook supports you as you create joy-filled goals for the year
ahead.

If you’d like to dive deeper into learning

to use writing for personal development,
check out my Udemy course How to
Start Journaling for Personal Growth.
The course covers everything you need
to know to start and maintain a
journaling practice that will deepen your
self-awareness, help you connect with
your internal compass, and transform
your insights into real-life change.

As a subscriber, you can save 25% on the course price by clicking here
and entering the coupon code BWYA25 at checkout.

Would you like tailored support and accountability as you work towards your
goals? I provide one-to-one coaching that uses a rational approach to
personal development to help you get to where you want to go, while
learning a ton about yourself in the process. Click here to see what other
people have said about working with me, and get in touch to inquire about
my current availability.

Wishing you much success with everything you do,

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