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Wow March when did that happen?! Seems like yesterday was Christmas and now it’s already Spring! I am sooo ready for that warm weather, send it all my way. Dallas has had the craziest
“Winter” it never got super cold but instead we had more rainy, dreary days than I’ve ever experienced. I’m not sure if that is necessarily a great sign for our Spring ahead, but the warmer days will make up for it.
I realized the other day one of the small personal goals I had set for myself in the New Year had become a habit. I made a goal for myself to take the stairs every morning into work. I work on the second floor and for the first two years at this company, I took the elevator up one floor out of pure convenience. I wrote a blog post on How to Meet and Exceed Your Fitness Goals and one of the things I talked about is how to live a healthy lifestyle. If you add healthy lifestyle habits into your daily routine, you are more likely to live an active lifestyle which will help you in your fitness goals.
They say it takes two months for something to become a habit and I finally feel like I don’t even think about taking the elevator anymore. The stairs are part of my daily routine. Now, even though this may be a small feat, it is an accomplishment, and one I am semi-proud of myself for because I followed through. It got me thinking about the other New Year’s resolutions I had set for myself and if at two months in I was making them a habit (or on my way there).
PERSONAL GOALS
I had shared two personal goals I was working on for myself this year and the first one is being present. I do think I have gotten better at this (you can ask Pierce for complete confirmation maybe he feels differently haha) but I am making a diligent effort to turn my phone off and not always stress about sharing what I’m doing.
My past four weekends have been crazy busy (all great things!) I was in Scottsdale, then Valentine’s Day weekend, Pierce’s birthday weekend and my parents were in town last weekend. Through all these fun events, I have made an effort to live completely in the moment and I do think I’ve done a pretty good job!! I didn’t check my phone or post once all last weekend with my parents and took a total detox and I needed it! Being present allows me to come back refreshed and recharged. I feel like it makes me a better blogger and content sharer.
Now, I’m not perfect and I wouldn’t say I’ve made this a habit by any means but I am making a conscious effort with is a start so I am excited to continue to work on it in the following months!
My second personal goal was to wake up early and I’ll be completely honest with y’all…. It’s not going great. You can see why I added waking up earlier in my New Year’s Resolutions post here and I’ve also talked about it in my How I Let Stress Run My Life Post here. I’ve done this a few times on days when I’m super busy after work and need to get things done but I am not consistent about it. Moving forward, my goal is to do this once a week and for consistency purposes for myself and my routine I need to just pick a day and stick to it. So let’s pick Tuesday haha now I’m accountable for it. Let’s see how this goes.
BUSINESS GOALS
My first goal for Styled Zebra was to continue to grow and create content around my photos. I have been doing better at this since I changed the way I plan content in January. I developed a content calendar in google sheets and it has really helped me stay on track with content. I used to have a giant mile long list on my phone and would just scroll through and pick out blog ideas. I realized this wasn’t keeping me very accountable for meeting deadlines so now I can see all my content laid out like a calendar.
This also keeps me on track for Instagram posting and stories, to do lists and other reminders. There is a lot that goes into producing a blog post and most of it is time, something I always seem to be short of 😉 I am working on making Sunday a full content day and just work on backend planning. I also made it a goal to stay on top of my taxes week to week instead of letting it all pile up at the end of a month.. or two.
My second goal I shared was to expand my blog onto multiple platforms so Instagram was not my only source of traffic. I have been impressed with how I’ve succeeded at this so far. I’ve almost doubled my website traffic through strategic SEO techniques. I’ve also grown my following through Pinterest which I started using only in late December. I’ve since grown my Pinterest views to 60k a month.
The biggest thing that has helped me grow on multiple platforms is consistency. Pinterest is a daily activity just like Instagram is but it constantly drives traffic back to my blog which is further helping my blog traffic. It’s all a big cycle and to me I want my website to be the bread and butter of my brand.
I do want to expand on Tik Tok and I’m reallllyyyy trying to figure out how I want to strategically do this. To me, Tik Tok is a lot of kids dancing semi inappropriately and I just don’t see how that fits my brand…at all. I have a few ideas on ways I could expand into this platform and through lots of research see some potential to get something integrated in the near future… to be continued haha.
RECAP
Ok so wow I am doing better than I thought on my New Year’s resolutions. Although not habits yet, I am making strides to following through with all of my goals. I think it is really important to check in with yourself throughout the year and constantly be setting new goals for yourself while reflecting on the old ones. Goal setting is such a great way to better yourself and even your business and a check in every so often is warranted to staying on the side of success!
What were your New Year’s Resolutions?! Any tips for staying on top of them?! Have you made any of yours a habit yet?! Let me know in the comments.
