How to Make This Month Your Best Month Yet (9 Guides)

The start of every month has always been my favorite time to hit the reset button. Resteer my focus and align my habits with my values and bigger goals. For a while there, I found myself going into each new month with a bunch of unfinished plans from the previous month. Failing to finish always made me feel unmotivated and blah.

However, with a sprinkle of planning and the right mindset, I discovered that any month can be your best month yet. Below are 9 simple and actionable guides that I always use to ensure that every single month is better than the previous one.

Let’s jump in!

How to Make This Month Your Best Month Yet (9 Simple Guides)

1. Reflect on Your Goals

Before jumping into your daily grind, take some time to pause and reflect on what your goals are. Taking the time to reflect helps you see the bigger picture and allows you to ask yourself some straightforward questions. For example: what do you want to achieve? What areas of your life do you want to improve? What are your biggest goals right now? By asking yourself these simple questions, it’ll become easier to prioritize and decide where you should spend your time and energy.

Try writing down your goals and categorize them into groups such as personal development, career/student goals, health and fitness goals, finance goals, relationship goals, etc. Writing down your goals and categorizing them will help you see which areas of your life you’re focusing on the most. By doing this you’ll allow yourself to create balance. Don’t forget to write your thoughts down, creating a concrete plan by writing your thoughts down on paper can help you visualize your goals and identify which goals are short-term and which ones will take time.

Try to be as specific as possible when you’re setting goals. Instead of saying I want to get healthier, try saying I will workout 3 times a week or I will add 1 more serving of veggies to my diet daily. You’ll find that by being specific you’ll be able to measure your goals better and can even turn them into tasks. If you have an objective that you think is too big, try breaking it down into smaller objectives.

2. Create an Action Plan

Turn your goals into an action plan and create concrete steps you need to take in order to accomplish your goals. Break down your big goals into smaller tasks. For example, one of your goals can be fitness. You can turn that goal into going to the gym 3 times a week, meal prep, and tracking your progress. By creating small tasks you’ll ensure that you’ll create continuous progress towards your bigger goals.

Give each task a deadline. Adding deadlines to your tasks will force you to make progress instead of putting things off. Use a planner, calendar or a digital tool to map out your deadlines. Try prioritizing your tasks by what’s important and what needs to be done urgently. By doing this you’ll make your day-to-day decisions easier. If a task is too big, try breaking it down into weekly tasks. This will allow you to have a flexible plan but still have direction.

Add weekly checkpoints to track your progress. Try doing a short daily review, as well as a more in-depth weekly review. These checkpoints will allow you to identify what worked and what you can improve on. Weekly checkpoints will ensure that small problems won’t become bigger. Try using 1 planner or tool to manage your tasks and keep everything in one place.

3. Develop a Daily Routine

Create a daily routine that will allow you to align with your action plan. Start out by writing down your important tasks. Things like work or school obligations, personal projects, learning, self-care, etc. Schedule your tasks into time blocks that’ll allow you to work with your rhythm. If you’re more focused during the morning, try scheduling your focused work in the morning and leaving tasks that require less focus to the afternoon.

Structure is key when building a routine. Your routine will start to become a habit when you start doing the same thing every day. Try to schedule blocks of time to where you’ll be working, taking short breaks, going to the gym, and relaxing. You can even set alarms to keep yourself on track. Allow yourself to switch things up if a task takes you longer to complete or you’re not feeling as productive. Your daily schedule should have a consistent structure but be flexible.

Incorporate small morning and nightly routines. Doing a quick morning routine to visualize your top priorities for the day and a quick nightly routine to review what you’ve completed helps keep you accountable. A daily routine can help you reduce decision fatigue by limiting the amount of decisions you have to make. Many things will become habitual because you’ll already know what you need to do during certain parts of the day.

4. Stay Positive and Motivated

Keeping positive will allow you to stay productive and happy. Try using positive affirmations to keep yourself confident. These affirmations can be as simple as I am capable of learning new things. Visualization is another great way to stay positive. Take a few seconds to visualize yourself accomplishing your goal and reaching your desired outcome. Visualize yourself going through the steps necessary to get there.

Don’t sweat the small stuff and know that failure is a part of the process. When something isn’t going your way, try to look at the situation as a learning experience. Ask yourself what does this obstacle have to teach me and how can I adapt to these changes. By reframing failure as experimenting you’ll put less pressure on yourself and will keep your momentum going. Remember to use tools that have helped in the past. Break your tasks down into smaller ones, celebrate the small victories, and stay problem solving when things don’t go as planned.

Find what motivates you and allow that to inspire you every day. That could be listening to a podcast that gets you fired up to write. Or it could be hanging a quote up in your workspace that keeps you motivated. Find little things that you can look at or do daily that’ll spark that motivation within you. You’ll find that these small pieces of motivation can help you stay driven without you having to force yourself.

5. Connect with Others for Support

Surround yourself with people that will support you and your goals. Share your plans with friends and family that will encourage you and keep you accountable. Having someone else knowing your plans will allow you to receive constructive feedback. They can help point out things you may not have noticed.

Schedule check-ins with friends or family members. Checking in with someone once a week or every other week can help you stay accountable and someone to celebrate your small victories with. Sometimes just knowing someone else will ask you about your goals can give you that extra push you need to stay consistent. Working towards goals with someone can also open up new opportunities and make tough tasks feel easier.

Know who can support you in different areas. You may have friends that are great at keeping you motivated and cheering you on. But another friend could be really good at helping you problem solve. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Ask your friends for 5 minutes of their time to celebrate your wins with you or help you plan out your next steps. The more specific you are with the people in your life the more they can support you. If you don’t have someone locally that you can reach out to, look for virtual communities that have others trying to reach goals similar to you.

6. Take Breaks and Practice Self-Care

For every time you sit down to focus on your tasks, take small breaks in between to allow yourself to recharge. Step away from your computer for 5 minutes, take a walk or do some stretches. If you have the opportunity, get outside and allow nature to refresh your mind.

Incorporate small things that you enjoy into your daily routine. Take 10 minutes to read a book, listen to your favorite song, or hang out with the people that make you feel rejuvenated. Try practicing mini-meditations or doing some deep-breathing exercises to clear your mind. Remember to prioritize sleep, drinking water and eating healthy meals. When you take care of the basics you’ll allow yourself to have more energy and stay focused. Try making self-care a routine that you’ll follow instead of an option.

If you’re feeling tired, take it easy. Allow yourself to watch that TV show you’ve been bingeing on or take a nap. Sometimes you just need to rest, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Your rest days are just as important as your busy days because it allows you to recover. Your brain also becomes more creative when you allow yourself time to relax. Try planning a simple meal plan for the week and a quick sleep schedule to help you preserve energy.

7. Track Your Progress

Make sure you’re tracking your progress weekly. Keeping track of your progress will allow you to stay locked in on your goals. Grab a journal and write down what you did that helped you move closer to your goals. What obstacles got in your way and what did you learn from them?

Use technology to stay consistent. Whether you buy a habit tracker, use a to-do list app, or use a simple spreadsheet. Find a tool that you’ll enjoy using and will look forward to updating. Stick with the process of tracking your progress. When you’re able to look back week over week you’ll see small improvements. That’ll allow you to keep pushing forward and can help you make smarter goals moving forward.

Try tracking your activities and your rewards. Take notes on how much time you spent focused that day or how many tasks you were able to complete. But also track your rewards. How many workouts did you complete this week? How many books did you read? Pick 1-2 metrics you’d like to improve on and track those every week.

8. Celebrate Your Achievements

Reward yourself for your accomplishments no matter how small they may be. By recognizing your progress you’ll allow yourself to feel better and help you build good habits. Celebrate your victories by watching your favorite show for 30 mins or eating that snack you’ve been craving. Allow yourself to relax and appreciate how far you’ve come.

Celebrate your achievements with others. If you reached a goal that you feel others would enjoy, celebrate together. Letting others know your wins will allow you to build a community of people around you that can keep you accountable. These cheerio sessions will also act as reminders you can use to push yourself towards your next goal.

Keep celebrations simple but meaningful. You don’t want celebrations to become a routine and expect huge rewards every time you complete a task. These rewards should remind you that you’re progressing and allow you to take a break.

9. Plan Ahead

Take some time to reflect on your wins and analyze the data you’ve tracked. From your weekly reviews, start planning for next month. If you created goals that were too ambitious, lower the goal. If you realized you had room for improvement on a specific goal, try increasing your target. Map out a simple weekly action plan with your next steps and checkpoints to review your progress.

Always remember to reevaluate your plan each week. By allowing your plan to be flexible and simple you’ll prevent your goals from becoming boring. View your progress as a cycle. You just completed a cycle of reflection, planning, execution, and reviewing. Start again on your next cycle and allow yourself to continuously improve each week.

Conclusion

Motivation and improvement come from focusing on reflection, having a practical action plan, maintaining good daily routines, and practicing self-care. Blend small enjoyable rewards into your everyday life with your actionable steps. Use support from friends and family, good habits, and small celebrations to help you stay focused and improve.

Experiment with your month. Try one thing for 2 weeks and see how it makes you feel. If you like how it feels you can continue your experiment or adjust it to fit your needs. Any month can be your best month if you take the time to tune into what you want and actually execute your plans.

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