3 Tips to Set Goals for Abundance

2020 is just around the corner. So what are your goals for abundance in the new year? It can be challenging to know what to focus on and where to start. But if you focus your goals and keep them from getting too big, you can pick achievable goals that will help you make the living world around you come alive with abundance. Keep reading to learn how.

I remember planning the design for my property when my wife and I first purchased our land. I had loads of ideas, and I really wanted to get started on them right away to cultivate abundance for people, plants and wildlife.

But then the deer came… and my priorities quickly shifted to keeping the deer out so my plants could grow.

We also had our little boy, and then, a couple years later, our little girl. Having 2 young kids really changes how much time you have for other priorities.

The result is that a lot of my grand plans and goals went uncompleted and got pushed back. Some projects from that time are still unfinished.

But I also learned an important lesson.

I pulled back my efforts and refocused on the area closer to our house—what would be called zone 1 and 2 in permaculture design.

Now, instead of trying to set my goals around almost 3 acres of land, I could instead focus on a third of an acre. With this new focus, I’m making steady progress and really transforming this inner area.

Learning to focus my efforts is just part of the lessons I have learned when it comes to setting goals for my abundance. Let’s dive into 3 tips to help you set your own goals for abundance in the new year.

But before we do, make sure to grab your free and easy-to-print worksheet all about rewilding your property. As you set your goals for abundance, it’s important not to forget to work with nature and support local wildlife.

Focusing Your Goals for Abundance

When you start thinking about your goals for abundance, first think about what would make the biggest difference on your property. What would transform your life the most?

On our property, we decided that what would make the biggest impact on our life is to increase our food production.

The first couple years were all about keeping deer out, setting up some basic infrastructure (fences, sheds, etc.), and getting a framework of hedgerows and other perennial plant systems in place to support wildlife, help keep pests in balance, and more.

But during this time, our food production was fairly low. We grew vegetables amongst our young shrubs and trees, but we didn’t have a permanent garden.

Now we do, but we need more food—especially staple crops like potatoes—if we are to feed our growing family.

We also want more fruits and berries! Got to have some of the fun foods, too!

So for us, our goals for abundance in the new year are focused around expanding our food production. To meet this goal, we are setting up a new growing area with a warm micro-climate on the south side of our house, as well as a couple new potato beds, and a series of terraces for corn, squash and other crops.

Oh, and we are building a new garden just for our kids, so they can start growing their own vegetables. Of course they’ll be able to help out with other garden spaces, but this will be a place they can really take ownership, to make their own choices and learn from their mistakes. I always had a garden bed of my own as a kid that I just loved—I always grew lots of carrots!

While these growing spaces will be a lot of work to set up, they will also be done early. And combined with our existing kitchen garden, our food production will increase dramatically.

It doesn’t matter if your goal is bigger or smaller than ours, as long as you keep it focused. By focusing our core goal on increasing our food production, that means we should prioritize building our new garden beds over other projects—even if those projects would be more fun (like building ponds!).

But all this new food production will have some ripple effects that will influence our other goals for abundance. Let’s talk about these in the next section.

Don’t Forget About the Ripple Effects

When you start transforming your property to cultivate abundance for people, plants and wildlife, you will likely have some ripple effects to keep in mind. Predicting what these impacts will be can help inform your other goals for abundance.

Our goal of producing more food will result in, well, a lot more food! Which is great, but we have to be able to use it all.

This means changing our cooking habits, as well as making sure we can preserve our new abundance!

This takes us to another one of our goals for abundance in the new year: improving our storage capacity for preserved foods.

To do this, we’re considering buying an upright freezer and potentially improving the shelving in our pantry. All of this would give us more room for freezing our vegetables and storing canned or dried foods.

Without these additions to our place, we might not be able to use all the new food we’ll be producing.

So when you start thinking about your goals for abundance in the new year, make sure to think through what will happen if you achieve your goals.

If you do this for each of your goals, you will be able to plan through all the steps you need to take to fully achieve your goals for abundance.

For us, adding a new freezer also means changing up a room that’s currently an office to make room for the freezer. This could mean we need to buy or build a new desk that my wife and I can share instead of having 2 separate desks.

All this from the first goal of growing more food! So make sure to think through your goals and what the ripple effects will be so you’re not surprised by the results!

Pick Goals that Will Save You Time or Work

Cultivating abundance for people, plants and wildlife takes time and energy. So my final tip for setting your goals for abundance in the new year is to think about what you can do to save yourself time and/or work in the future.

One example is growing more perennial vegetables and setting up a food forests. This will take upfront time, but in the long run, you will save time and energy by reducing how much planting you need to do each spring in order to get a harvest.

Or you could finish mulching all your plants so you don’t need to water as often in the summer.

Achieving these goals will free up some of your time for other things—there are always other things to do!

For us, we are thinking about getting chickens in 2020. Now, in many ways this will mean more work for us, from letting them out each morning and feeding them to moving them around our property. Plus, we need to build them a coop!

That’s actually why we’ve put off getting chickens for so long. It’s a big time commitment! The more time you spend caring for chickens, the less time you have for other things, and I had too many other projects that needed my attention.

But the chickens can also be used to help prepare land for planting. If we use a mobile coop with an electric poultry net fence, we can move our chickens around our land and use them as the first pass to help clear land for future plantings.

Plus, they also help build soil fertility through their droppings! Easy fertilizer!

I have relied on sheet-mulching for most of my land prep work close to my house. But as I finish that area and move further away from my house, I need helpers.

Luckily, chickens love to scratch, and they can be effective at removing existing vegetation. Just think how bare a permanent chicken run can get! I don’t want that, but I do want help transitioning the land from old pasture to productive food systems that also support wildlife.

Chickens can be a big help. (Plus, we’ll get a lot of food from them!)

Set Your Goals to be Achievable

As you set your goals, don’t go overboard. Everything takes time, and it’s better to make steady progress toward cultivating abundance instead of trying to do it all at once.

Our goal of producing more food could be a huge one.

But we are focusing on 3 new garden areas which will all be completed by spring. Also, by front-loading our efforts, we can make sure we have more time later in the year for the other parts of the goal—preserving and using the abundance of food we will be growing.

By front-loading our efforts, we can make sure we have more time later in the year for the other parts of the goal—preserving and using the abundance of food we will be growing.

Breaking up your goals into separate projects and tasks and then checking those off 1 by 1 is a great way to make your goals achievable.

Keep in mind that new tasks and projects will come up. I just had a deer break part of my deer fence, which resulted in me spending time away from my other projects to fix and strengthen the fence.

Things always come up, so make sure to give yourself some extra time.

Plus, we all need time to relax and spend time with family and friends. Don’t make yourself so busy you never get time to enjoy the amazing abundance you are creating on your property.

One last thing—as you are setting your goals and mapping out the specific projects you’ll be working on, remember that you can work strategies into those projects that will give back to the land and support your local wildlife, too!

What are your goals for abundance in the new year? Leave a comment to share!