The hardest of the abilities: vulnerability & accountability

My purpose with this weekly newsletter was always to combine a bit of my life and travel updates with tangible steps that will also help you moving forward... who doesn't love the thought of improving their daily life, right?

Off the back of last week's newsletter, I actually had a few people reach out and ask how and where I set my daily/ weekly/ monthly goals. And secondly, how I stay accountable and track them.

I started out using a word doc that I would type my daily goals onto, and then copy and paste across the 30 days for each month. I'd stick it on the fridge and highlight or cross them off each day- it worked because it was highly visible and the physical action of crossing them off gave me a sense of success and fulfilment.

At the beginning of this year, I updated my method a little. I follow @growwithcolby on Instagram and downloaded his free Google Sheets version of the tracker below. This works for me right now because I'm on my laptop most days for work and for study, and it's easy because in the chaos of 2024 I've been traveling and moving around a lot, and I can take this with me easily. It also has some really neat features like a weekly and monthly review, and those pre-populate at the end of the year. All of the tracker data is automated so you don't need to touch it- it works on its own as you check off boxes or leave them blank!

The beauty of it really lies in the data though- I can see that I have missed a lot of daily habits in the first week of April and initially that made me feel really disappointed in myself. But when I check out the tracker on the right, I can see I've still completed 17% of my daily habits, and we're only 25% into the month.

It's a moment of acknowledgement for those habits that I've hit, and also a moment of accountability for those that I've missed- what happened this last week that made it so difficult to achieve them? Are they too hard, and therefore unattainable? Was I too busy prioritising other things or people above my goals? For me, it was a combination of travelling/ being a guest with family, and just generally not feeling it/ letting stress get to me/ scrolling on my phone instead.

I hit my first full day of completion on this Monday and aim to hit all of my habits for this week in an effort to improve my consistency. It's important to me to hit most of my goals across the month because how I show up for these small daily actions is actually how I show up for the big stuff too. If I avoid working out because 'I don't feel like', then I can guarantee I'm also putting off something in my business or in my personal relationship because 'I don't feel like it'. Sometimes it's ok to honour your feelings, but if it's becoming a bad habit and if you're avoiding more than you're achieving, the best thing you can do is to sit down and have a date with yourself.

Seriously, take the time to schedule it in and look at what you're avoiding and why. Get vulnerable. Get honest. Get real with yourself. What impact is it having on your life?

Missing your morning workout might mean you feel sluggish and unmotivated for the rest of the day. Missing an important conversation with a loved one might mean that the relationship declines into a place of mutual resentment.

I write all of this to prove to you how easy it is to get down on ourselves when we miss a few days of something. I've been struggling to keep up my workout routine and my meditation this month because I've been away staying with family... but that was just my excuse. I avoided my workout because I felt like it was selfish to take time for myself. Not such a massive deal. I had also avoided completing business and study work because it felt selfish, but now I have two weeks of work to catch up on and I realise that I have nobody else but myself to blame because this pattern is all mine. A much bigger deal.

This morning I decided enough was enough. I was sick of feeling sluggish and lethargic, and above all I was sick of feeling disappointed in myself for not keeping my own word.

Just because we start off on the wrong foot, just because we miss a few days, just because we aren't where we want to be yet... it doesn't mean that you can't pick yourself up and achieve tomorrow. Consistency looks different for everybody and every stage of our lives.

A mother with young children isn't going to be able to complete everything she was doing when she was a single woman in her early twenties with little responsibility.

Sometimes we have to realise that as long as we have goals that we're working towards, and as long as we're making an effort to hit most of them, then we're actually doing an incredible job. We're not robots or machines, and that's ok. I love this visual and explanation from Colby's page.

He has great motivational and neuroscience hacks that are actually helpful. If you sign up to his newsletter, linked in his Instagram bio, you can also receive this goal tracker for free. It's a really neat tracker and it has made a massive improvement towards how I think about my goals and my achievements this year.

I'm writing to you from Mum's on the Sunshine Coast, where it is surprise, raining again. I think we've had three full days of sunshine here since the beginning of the year and everything is sloshy and muddy and wet and gross. I dropped off my van this morning to the guys down in Caloundra, and they'll be fitting it out with a few customisations before I finally hit the road for good on my big trek. Travelling last week on my own was incredible, but I still felt as though I had deadlines and places to be. I can't wait to get the van fitted out properly and then take off for real.

My first stop is Tamworth for a wedding, and then after that - wherever the wind blows me 🍃

Full reveal and most of my travel content will be over on my Instagram so if you're not already following me there, be sure to check it out!

If you find any of this content helpful, entertaining, cringe-worthy, then please reach out and let me know! I'd love to hear from you and see how you're using some of this as inso in your own life 🌸