 All right guys, we are like two months now into 2021. And you know, the new year is always a great time to like set goals for yourself. It's kind of like this nice restarting moment, this like fresh, I don't know, just like a clean slate to like say, hey, it's a new year, these are my new goals. And I think it's so important to like have goals for yourself, even if there's something like very small. So that way you just have something to look forward to and to work on and to accomplish. And it gives you so much like satisfaction when you accomplish your goals. So I'm gonna talk about how to set goals, realistic goals and how to actually achieve them in this video. But before we get started, I wanna talk a little bit about today's video sponsor, Picmonic. You guys know that I love Picmonic. I've talked about them a million times in my videos. But Picmonic is a great nursing resource for you, whether you're in nursing school or even a new nurse. Picmonic is a fun app or website that you can use to help you study for nursing school, the NCLEX, or just prepare you for being a new bedside nurse. Basically what Picmonic is, is they have fun little pictures and video stories for each nursing topic. So for example, if you're learning about high blood pressure, you can go on search high blood pressure and there'll be a Picmonic video that helps you learn about hypertension or high blood pressure in a fun and meaningful way. Remember hypertension assessment as the assess man cracking down on a chef with high blood pressure. Essential hypertension, shown by the Espresso Hiker BP, is idiopathic but may be linked to genetics, poor diet or obesity. Whereas secondary hypertension, shown by the Tutu Hiker BP, is the result of a disease or medication. I know that when I was in nursing school, I literally did this for myself, but it's so nice that there's a resource that does it for you now. They tell creative stories that help trigger your memory. So that way when you're taking a test and you're like come across a question about high blood pressure, you're like, oh, I remember that goofy quirky story about high blood pressure and it easily triggers your memory to help you remember information. There's so many other great features about Picmonic. You can create video playlists. You can do question banks so that way you can study NCLEX style questions. You can also go on and search for your nursing textbooks and find Picmonics that are specific for your nursing textbooks because nobody wants to read a thousand pages a day, literally for nursing school in these huge textbooks. So if you can go on and kind of do like the little short video version of it that makes you remember the information in like a fun and meaningful way, why wouldn't you do it? So I'm going to leave a link down below so you can go check out Picmonic and try it out for free and I highly, highly recommend it. So let's talk a little bit about goals and how we can achieve them, especially like being nurses. I feel like we're, sorry, I'm like really pregnant. So if you see me hold my stomach and I just have a full meal, I would really have a huge baby in my belly. But anyways, in nursing school and as nurses, it's really important to set goals for yourselves because I feel like it gives you something to look forward to, to work on and just help you become and grow a better person and a better nurse. For myself, what I like to do is I like to actually write down my goals, both short-term and long-term goals. So maybe I have goals just for this specific day. Maybe I have goals for this semester. Maybe you have goals that are like five year down the road long-term goals and these can be both like personal goals or professional goals. But the first tip I recommend is actually writing down your goals. So you can visualize them, you can see them. It's one thing to kind of have them in your head that I feel like until you write it down, writing it down makes it more like visual and concrete and like, okay, I am going to be working on this. So write down your goals and then also write down kind of the timeframe that you want to accomplish them in. I think having a timeframe really like keeps you accountable and motivated to try and accomplish it by that specific time. Can you imagine if like instructors were like, well, you know, our test is due on May 1st, but maybe it may be like July 1st instead. You would have a hard time keeping yourself accountable, studying for that exam if there wasn't like a clear set test date. And so do that with your goals, have very clear timeframes of when you want to accomplish these by. And one fun thing that I like to do when I like create these timeframes is I like to actually like write down a fun method of counting down. So some people prefer to count down by like days or weeks or months, which I think works well, but at the same time, I like to count down in like fun things. So I used to count down in like, okay, I have six paychecks left until I reach this timeframe for this goal. Or maybe like every Monday you do a little, I don't know, study group or girls thing or something like that, be like, okay, I've got 12 more Mondays left of my fun like girls time or study group until I accomplish this goal. And actually like write down little check boxes or give yourself little stickers or something so you can visualize counting down and seeing the your progress. The next step to accomplishing your goals is to, one, make sure they're realistic, but to actually write out a plan or create a plan that helps you accomplish this goal. It's great if you say like, okay, by summer of 2022, I want to apply for a nurse practitioner school. Okay, well, what does that entail? Maybe write down like, okay, I'm going to look at five different schools. I'm going to apply for five different schools. I'm going to gather my resume or my credentials or whatever components you know you're going to need to actually apply to nurse practitioner school. Write those things down so you can check them off and make sure you're actually having like tangible things that you're doing to get to your goal. The next thing is also make sure that when you're trying to accomplish your goals that you are enjoying the process of it and not just focusing on the outcome because so much of like accomplishing our goals is the growing process that's in between. Like it's great that you're going from point A to point B but like what really matters is this period in between. And so maybe your goal is to graduate nursing school and that's awesome, it's an amazing goal, but enjoy that process, really embrace like that struggle that growth that you're having between point A and point B because so much of like accomplishing your goals is not just reaching the goal, it's actually like celebrating and growing in the process of accomplishing your goal. I hope that makes sense. That was a lot of kind of like words that I just threw in there. Another tip I have for standing goals and accomplishing them is to reward yourself. Now this can look different for so many people. Maybe you like to reward yourself in like going out with friends or maybe you would yourself in sleep right now being pregnant and having a two year old. That's what I reward myself in is like I'm gonna go to bed early tonight. Maybe you reward yourself in binging a Netflix show or maybe you order takeout for the night, whatever it is make sure of rewarding yourself for these goals because it's a rewarding itself to accomplish a goal but it can be stressful. Like a lot of these goals that you're probably setting for yourself involve work, involve growth and that can be challenging because it wouldn't be a goal if it wasn't like challenging. So reward yourself for accomplishing the goal and maybe even write that down. Like, okay, I'm gonna graduate nursing school and then I'm gonna go on a week trip with my close nursing school friends or whatever it may be. I would love to hear some of your guys's goals for 2021 or even beyond maybe you have some longer term goals and these could be both like personal goals, professional goals right now. I'm like, like I said, I'm pregnant and so I'm really focused on my family life and so some of my goals are just like having a safe pregnancy and delivery, take time off on maternity leave to enjoy with my family. Those are kind of like my goals right now. And so I would love to hear what your guys's like professional goals are for like nursing or whatever you're doing but also what are your personal goals in your life for things that maybe you're looking forward to outside of being a nurse. So thank you so much for watching this video. Make sure you check out Pigmonic in the description box below. Love, love, love, love Pigmonic. I know you guys do too because so many of you guys use them and it reached out to me saying that it was like the key to you doing well in nursing school and taking the NCLEX and all that. So thank you for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.