Hi there! Anna here! In honor of another fresh new year ahead of us, I wanted to share a blog post on the topic of casting vision and setting goals for 2022. Jesús and I are pretty big dreamers, making a living in pretty unconventional ways as an artist and a musician. Over the years, we've been obsessed with the process of plotting out practical ways to keep striving towards our dreams. As we've set bigger and bigger goals, we've continued looking for ways to refine our process of working towards them, which has ultimately helped us reach milestones along the way.

Although we're not usually ones for New Year's resolutions, we love the symbolism of a new beginning that the New Year brings and the time of reflection and realignment that it can offer us. With this post, we want to encourage you by providing some simple, practical pieces of advice for setting and reaching new goals in 2022. These tips are based on what's worked for us in the past and what we think can work for you as well!

You're worthy and capable of achieving your biggest dreams, my friend. You have what it takes to focus on and work towards them one step at a time.

So here it goes:

Advice for setting and reaching your biggest goals in the New Year:

1. Start with Your "WHY"

Perhaps you've heard this concept before from an entrepreneur you admire, in a book, or on a podcast. This idea of establishing your "why," your core motivation in life, before plotting out your goals, is crucial because it lays a valuable foundation for the hard work that you're about to set out to accomplish.

Dreams take consistency and time to achieve, and if you get stuck or tired along the way, you'll be more likely to push through the process of figuring out how to succeed if you know WHY you're doing what you're doing every day.

For Jesús and I, we're always thinking about the kind of legacy and life we hope to leave behind when we're old. We want our work to empower and encourage other creatives to pursue their callings and gifts in life. At the same time, we care deeply about building self-sustaining, generational wealth to live our lives as a fine artist (me) and musician (Jesús) while showing our future children by example that you can thrive in creative careers.

So with these core motivations behind every dream that we have, we set goals that provide us scalable and passive income streams (with digital products, courses, real estate rentals, music royalties). At the same time, we share our creative pursuits in ways we hope will encourage and help others through their creative journeys.

Have you ever considered your "why" before? The thing or things that deeply motive you to create a beautiful and fulfilling life for yourself? If you have, perhaps this New Year can prompt the re-assessment of your motivations. Maybe you can refine or reinforce your "why" based on clarity or new perspectives you gained in 2021. If you haven't, consider taking 5-10 minutes to sit with your thoughts today or this week to thoughtfully consider what your core motivations are behind the dreams you feel the most passionate about.

2. Reverse Engineer Your Dreams

Once you have your "why" in mind, allow yourself to dream freely and boldly, knowing that there IS a way for you to reverse engineer the pathway to these dreams through attainable goal-setting. Progress is a matter of slow and steady commitment; building something meaningful takes time and consistency.

When I say "reverse engineer," I'm suggesting that you begin searching for ways that you can work backward from your dreams this year. In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey calls this "beginning with the end in mind."

Think of it as taking a road trip. First, you need to know the destination, and then you need a map to lead you there. For example, if you've decided to drive cross country from Florida to Los Angelos, it's not enough to simply start driving west. There are all kinds of routes that you could take, and if you veer off course even a little bit, you could find yourself in a completely different state.

In goal setting, our dreams are the destinations, and our goals provide us maps that require daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly actions to see progress in the right direction and arrive where we'd like to be at the ends of our lives.

Jesús and I love to set goals throughout the year based on our long-term dreams, and from there, we always start looking at what needs to be accomplished in quarterly or monthly increments so we can see these goals begin to happen. From there, we can narrow things down even further into weekly and daily tasks.

Have you tried reverse engineering your dreams before? Look at the year as a whole, and try breaking down your big goals into smaller monthly goals to make real progress.

Having a large year at a glance calendar helps a ton in this process. Shameless plug - we actually designed the "Big Dreams Calendar" in our shop for this very purpose of planning out goals with a birds' eye look at the coming year. If our calendar doesn't fit your planning needs, there are also tons of other planners and calendars online that you could try!

3. Consistency Wins

After establishing your "why" and reverse engineered your yearly goals into smaller attainable goals, the next step is to make the most of the time available to you each day. In the process of pursuing any dream, consistency WINS. A friend that Jesús and I look up to once told us - "the people who fail at their dreams are always the ones who gave up a day too soon." AKA, don't give up. Find something, even something very small, that you can do every day to get you closer and closer to your goals.

And when you set out to make this small daily commitment, let me recommend that you measure your progress in increments of time instead of by a checklist. Here's an example:

A different friend was talking to Jesús on the phone one day about wanting to strengthen his skills as a songwriter. He shared that he had set a goal to start writing one song every day. If you know anything about writing music, you know that this can be a pretty heavy task - even if the song is simple or you're a great songwriter a song can take a lot of time. And because the goal of writing one song a day is a pass or fail assignment - you will either succeed in writing one or you'll fail. Therein lies a lot of potential for discouragement if you had a busy day, or perhaps you're wrestling with a new idea and can't quite finish that new song one day.

So Jesús recommended that our friend try this - instead of aiming to write a new song every day, try committing 15 minutes to songwriting every day.

The goal of improving songwriting skills is still being pursued. However, the pursuit is being structured more measurably and sustainably, which leads to a higher likeliness that the habit will be kept up, which builds creative momentum and ultimately leads to better songs and perhaps a higher output!

4. Create Accountability

Last but not least, we recommend creating accountability to help ensure that you achieve these big dreams for 2022. You can hold yourself accountable for your goals by simply telling people about them! Be it with family and friends or your brand's online community.

For Jesús and I, there hasn't been a better way for us to ensure something gets done in our business than by giving ourselves public deadlines. We've often announced launch dates before a product is even finished because this removes a safety net that might unnecessarily delay or hold us back. When we tell people something is coming, we're setting a deadline that others are counting on, and that means we will do whatever it takes to finish things.

Now, we only do this when we're absolutely sure that we have the time we need to meet our self-imposed deadlines. I don't want to recommend that you ever overpromise to your customers and under-deliver. But sometimes, it helps to have a good old-fashioned fire under our butts, and we can create that fire by creating accountability for ourselves with others.

It might sound scary to share your goals openly, but you can do it on whatever level you feel comfortable. Tell a friend you trust - someone who will encourage you and cheer you on. You can tell Jesús and me if you'd like! You can be someone who boldly speaks your goals and then follows through on them.

Prompt:

As you spend some time with these four recommendations for setting and achieving your big, beautiful goals for 2022, let me recommend taking a little quiet time to yourself to journal and envision how you'd like this New Year to look and feel. Think about what inspires you and how you want your life to have felt and looked when you're much older someday.

Set a 10-minute timer and begin to consider:

What are your core motivations, your "why," the thing that drives your work?
What are one or two big dreams that you want to pursue in 2022? How can you break these goals up into attainable quarterly and monthly goals?
What simple thing can you work on each day that will bring you closer to your dreams little by little? How can you measure progress through allotted time? Remember, consistency wins. Pace yourself sustainability for this incredible marathon you're running.
Who is one person that you can share your goals with who you know will encourage and motivate you? Tell them next time you see them or give them a call today. Ask for accountability.

You got this! You're more than capable of crafting a life that fulfills and inspires you. Let the start of this year be a pivotal moment that you'll look back on and feel proud of yourself for the ways that you began to take your dreams seriously and acted upon them through the goals you set.

Your 2022 Goal-Setting Guide

1. Start with Your "WHY"

2. Reverse Engineer Your Dreams

3. Consistency Wins

4. Create Accountability

Prompt:

Recommended Reading:

Your 2022 Goal-Setting Guide

1. Start with Your "WHY"

2. Reverse Engineer Your Dreams

3. Consistency Wins

4. Create Accountability

Prompt:

Recommended Reading:

January 2022

Casas de Núñez: Living Room Remodel (Feat. Burrow)