Master Self-Care this School Year with Action-Based Goals

Hey teaching rockstars! Ever created a health goal and immediately gotten discouraged by it?

Maybe you set a goal of losing ten pounds and it’s just not happening.

Or you set a goal to be more organized this school year, but then the clutter piles up.

Or you set a goal to have more work-life balance, and…by October you no longer have a life outside of school.

This week on The Whole Adventure Facebook page, I shared a healthy teacher quick tip on goal-setting so you can be more successful when creating self-care goals. You can watch that video here:

More of a reader? I got you covered. Here’s the strategy:

Make your goals ACTION-BASED instead of RESULTS-BASED.

Why? Results-based goals tend to be too vague, too broad, or straight up unclear of what you should be doing. And we don’t have very much control over actually getting the result which can be totally discouraging.

Action-based goals, on the other hand, put you back in control. You know exactly what is expected of you each day—so much so that you could check it off on a list. You may still be doing those actions to get to a certain result, but the focus should be on achieving those actions until they become a habit each day.

With that in mind, let’s revise the goals above:

1. Instead of “lose 10 pounds”, give yourself actionable goals like “I will exercise for 30 minutes every day outside of school” and “I will meal prep whole foods for my lunches and dinners.” These actions may help you get to the result of losing weight.

2. Instead of “Be more organized” say “I will spend 5 minutes at the end of each day putting my paperwork in order” or “I will give two students the job of keeping the room’s supplies neat at the end of each activity.” These actions may lead to the result of being more organized.

3. Instead of “have more work-life balance” say “I will set dinner dates twice a week with friends” or “I will spend one hour each day painting” or “I will only work for two hours MAX on any given weekend”.

You get the idea :)

I hope this tip helps take some of the frustration out of making self-care goals this school year.

If you liked this tip, make sure to sign up for August’s free virtual class where I will share 7 tips like this one to help you make your goals rock solid and set you up for self-care success this school year. It’s coming up FAST!