2025 Planning Made Easy: Celebrate Wins, Set Goals, and Love Your Life EP#122

Do you want to make 2025 the year you truly love? In this episode, I simplify the process of goal-setting and annual planning with a fun and practical approach designed to work for you. Whether 2024 left you feeling accomplished or drained, this framework will help you celebrate your wins, set meaningful goals, and create a life you’re excited to wake up to every day. If you’ve ever struggled with staying motivated or sticking to resolutions, this episode is packed with tips to make 2025 planning easy, inspiring, and totally doable.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why celebrating your wins is the most overlooked (but essential!) part of planning.
• A 4-step system to simplify your annual planning and make it enjoyable.
• How to align your goals with your values so they’re meaningful and achievable.
• The importance of anticipation and how to highlight moments of joy throughout the year.
• Tips to keep your momentum going, even when life gets busy.

The 4-Step Framework for 2025 Planning Made Easy:

1. Celebrate Your Wins: Reflect on the highlights of 2024 with the Annual Highlight Reel to set a positive tone.
2. Plan Ahead: Identify key milestones, events, and challenges coming up in 2025 to create a realistic roadmap.
3. Set Meaningful Goals: Define what success looks like by December 31st, 2025, and make your goals deeply personal.
4. Build Anticipation: Highlight both big and small joys to keep you inspired throughout the year.

Free Resource for Your Best Year Yet:
Want to start planning your 2025? Download my free Annual Highlight Reel tracker here. It’s the perfect tool to celebrate your wins and set yourself up for success!

Quote of the Episode:
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" – Mary Oliver

Let’s Stay Connected:

• Visit my website: thehappieryou.net
• Join my community: The Happier You Face Book Group

Let’s make 2025 your happiest year yet!

Transcript

2025 Planning Made Easy: Celebrate Wins, Set Goals, and Love Your Life

Are You Ready to Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet?

It’s that time of year again—people are buzzing about New Year’s resolutions and yearly goals. Are you team goals, or do you find yourself on team head-in-the-sand? Maybe you hate setting goals because you never seem to reach them. Or you’ve given up entirely, tired of breaking your resolutions by mid-January. It’s easy to think, Why bother setting unrealistic goals?

Deep down, though, what you really want isn’t just a list of resolutions—it’s a life you love. You want 2025 to be the year you leave behind frustrations from 2024 and step into a life that feels exciting, fulfilling, and truly yours.

The Secret to a Great Year? Intentional Planning

Here’s the good news: creating your best year doesn’t require perfection. It simply requires a little intentionality. It’s about showing up for your life, looking ahead, and asking yourself, How can I support myself through what’s coming?

There are plenty of ways to plan and set goals, and what works best depends on you. If you already have a system you love, stick with it! But if yearly planning feels daunting—or even boring—I’m sharing a 3-step framework today that’s not only practical but also fun. This approach gives you hope for the year ahead and helps you create a realistic plan for success.

Let’s start with one of my favorite quotes from Lewis Carroll:

 "If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there."

Most of us will make it to December 31st, but the journey there? That’s up to you. If you don’t plan for it to be great, you’re leaving that responsibility in someone else’s hands—and trust me, they don’t have your best interests at heart.

My Journey to an Annual Planning Breakthrough

I’ve been setting yearly intentions for a while now, and it’s worked well for me—until last year. In January, I hit a mental roadblock. I felt stuck, unmotivated, and downright resistant to planning my goals.

A friend of mine, Jodi, sent me templates and tools from other people’s planning systems. At first, I was skeptical, but one concept shifted everything for me. The tool asked me to reflect on my accomplishments from the past year—big and small.

This exercise was actually very easy for me because I have a spot to record 3 small wins in my planner every day.  So all I had to do was go back and look through what those wins were.  

That simple act of looking back and celebrating my wins was a game-changer. It reminded me that even though 2024 wasn’t perfect, there were still meaningful moments of progress. 

Inspired, I created my own "Annual Highlight Reel" to track my wins month by month.  And to cut down on having to do it all in January, I started making it part of my monthly routine.  Now, on one page, I can see my big and small wins all in one place.  

Its interesting, the wins aren’t necessarily what I set out expecting to achieve last year, but they are wins none the less!  

By the end of the year, I have a full page of victories to review—and it keeps me motivated to keep going.

This process helped me move past my roadblock and plan for 2024 with hope and purpose.

The 3-Step Framework for Planning an Incredible Year

Are you ready to create your best year yet? Let’s dive into my 3-step framework. Grab a pen and paper—it’s simple, and it works!

Step 1: Warm Up by Celebrating Last Year’s Wins
 Start by reflecting on the past year. Write down your wins, big and small, from each month. Even if you’re not in the habit of tracking wins, take some time to remember the milestones that mattered.

I’ve created a free, downloadable one-page tracker called the "Annual Highlight Reel" to make this process easier. Print two copies—one for 2024 and one for 2025. By the end of this exercise, you’ll feel more optimistic and motivated to plan for the year ahead.

Step 2: Look Ahead and Identify Key Events
 Take a fresh sheet of paper and jot down everything you already know about the coming year: birthdays, trips, school holidays, busy seasons, and major events. Identifying these in advance helps you prepare emotionally and logistically.

Even though unexpected challenges will pop up, this exercise provides a structure to navigate the year with purpose—not perfection.

Step 3: Envision December 31, 2025
 Ask yourself, What do I want to be true about me by the end of the year? Break this into categories like family, health, work, or adventure. This clarity will guide your priorities and decisions throughout the year.

Bonus Step: Highlight and Anticipate
 What are you looking forward to in 2025? Big or small, list the moments, events, or opportunities that excite you. Let yourself feel the joy of anticipation—it’s a skill that makes life richer.

Final Thoughts

This simple 3-step framework only takes three sheets of paper:

• One for your Highlight Reel
• One for your Look Ahead
• One for your Envisioning Exercise

Make your "Highlight Reel" part of your monthly routine to stay inspired and motivated. Remember Mary Oliver’s famous words:
 "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Let’s make 2025 a year to celebrate.