5 Ways to Set and Achieve Your Goals with Silk + Sonder
So you’re ready to join the #plannerlife and conquer all of your goals, but you aren’t sure where to begin? Well first off:
Congratulations!
This is a heck of a journey and we’re so glad to have you along! Grab yourself a Silk + Sonder subscription (and don’t forget my code RACHELE15 for 15% off your first subscription!), and while you’re waiting for it to arrive, read on below to learn more about the tools you’ll find inside to get your started defining, breaking down, and ultimately achieving your most important goals!
Feeling directionless? Get started by exploring the theme.
Each monthly edition of Silk + Sonder has a new theme to inspire your self care, such as gratitude, delight, or loyalty, to name a few of my favorites from the past six months. If you aren’t sure where to begin with setting a goal, or you’re feeling overwhelmed with possibilities, get started by checking out the journal prompts. Here’s a few examples:
“What can you do to fill your own cup?”
“What is the top destination on your bucket list?”
“If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do differently in your life?”
Find a prompt that resonates with how you’re feeling. These journaling exercises will help you begin to get specific about what you want. Time for yourself. A vacation to save for. A challenge to undertake.
Now that you’ve got a what in mind, you’re ready to start digging in to a why.
2. Define Your Intentions
Or maybe first, let’s define “intention,” which is often confused with goal. An intention is a way you want to feel, and Silk + Sonder provides both a monthly and weekly space to reflect on this. A goal, in contrast, is a specific, actionable idea you want to achieve. You’re probably familiar with SMART goal setting, especially if you come from a corporate environment. But have you ever heard of WOOP?
WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan, and it can be a little more intuitive if you’re struggling to understand the why behind your goal. So let’s say your goal, or Wish, is to run a half marathon (that’s one I’m working on right now). The next thing to examine is the Outcome: how will you feel when you’ve completed the goal? How do you want to feel when you’ve reached your goal? Healthy? Powerful? Accomplished?
That’s an intention.
In the first pages of every Silk + Sonder journal, there is a worksheet for intentions in six areas of your life: spiritual health, personal life, physical health, key relationships, money management, and professional goals. Personally, the format I find most helpful is “I intend to _____. I will challenge myself to _____.”
I intend to add to my workout routine. I will challenge myself to close all three of my rings on my Apple Watch every day.
I intend to use the expenses worksheet to stay more aware of my finances. I will challenge myself to save $100 towards my vacation.
I always like to write my intentions out a few days before the start of the new month, then go back and review them on the 1st, and highlight the key words and phrases that have stuck out to me. I’ll use those in creating my monthly habits.
3. Break Out Your Steps
If you created your goal using WOOP, the last thing you did was create a plan. Or if you’re using a SMART goal format, you know that a goal needs to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. The Specific step is where our habits, or the small, repeatable actions that we take to work towards our larger goals, will come into play, and for that we’re going to want our habit trackers.
Silk + Sonder has two types of habit tracker, and I like to use the weekly trackers to get even more specific from my monthly tracker. So if my monthly tracker has “do some writing work,” which encompasses everything from my fiction to this blog to planning Instagram posts, my weekly tracker might break out “write 500 words of fiction” for 3 days if I need that extra little push.
Another way I use the monthly and weekly habit trackers in tandem is to support two different aspects of the same multi-faceted goal. In addition to my mental healthy needs, I am currently on a weight loss journey. So I’ll put my main focus into the monthly goal tracker; in past months that has been to record my meal plan and stay mindful of it, this month it’s cooking at home rather than ordering in. I’ll compliment that monthly goal with rotating weekly goals like “substitute chicken,” or with a DO NOT challenge, like “do not order fast food.” This gives me positive reinforcement even when I technically miss a day of my monthly goal; I didn’t cook at home, say, but I didn’t order fast food either, I went through some leftovers.
BONUS TIP: Need more than 7 spaces in your habit tracker? Use a color coded pair of related habits on one line: for instance, yellow for “journal” and green for “write fiction,” both of which are part of “write every day.”
4. Make a Plan
At it’s heart, Silk + Sonder is a planner. In fact their particular free-form weekly spreads are why I bought them in the first place, and only learned to use the worksheets I’ve been discussing above over time. Besides your repeatable habits, maybe your goals require some time-sensitive or otherwise specific one-off steps. If your goal is financial, that might be a trip to your physical branch, or a phone call that needs making. Sometimes there are specific mile-stone goals (literally, in my case, this week is 9 miles on the way to 13.1), or appointments that may interrupt your usual routines.
Every week as I set up my spread, I like to brainstorm these in the Weekly To-Dos section of the spread. Then I’ll reference this as I’m setting up each day’s checklist, and try to get through one-two every day. This lets me combine and balance my personal and professional goals with my standard household chores, so that neither one leaves me overwhelmed.
And all of that doesn’t mention the specialized monthly trackers. Silk + Sonder includes an expense tracker, which I’ve used the last few months to support a savings goal, and a sleep tracker, which I usually turn into a workout log where I can schedule my regular runs.
5. Celebrate Your Success
The best advice I ever received is this, from the college professor who mentored me through my junior and senior theses: You’re going to suffer disappointments, so make sure you keep a record of your successes.
While we’ve already talked about the guided prompts provided in every Silk + Sonder journal, there are also blank pages for your own prompts. When you achieve your goal, or even just a step towards it, ask yourself: “How do I feel?” “What’s changed for me?” “Am I still connected to this goal?” (or in SMART goal speak, is it still relevant?) “What can I do to reward myself?”
Don’t be afraid to get creative with this! Journaling is so much more than just words. Put in a ticket from your vacation, a playbill from the performance you worked toward, write in a quote from the book you finished or doodle your favorite character. Working on a craft project? Put a swatch in your journal. Got photos? Get your favorites printed and tape them in!
Looking for more tips? Find me on Instagram @plannerfoxtales where I share regular updates about how I’m using Silk + Sonder on the daily, and shoot me a DM there if you have specific questions. I never claim to have all the answers, but I’m always willing to offer the best advice that I can.
As always, happy planning, and may you reach all of your goals!