When I think of 2024, the word that comes to mind is WORK. Which isn’t exactly what I’m going for in life. It wasn’t *all* work, but I definitely am planning to make changes in 2025 to “right the ship” as they say. Let’s discuss my 2024 recap + my 2025 goals…
My 2024 Recap
I love taking an objective, balanced approach when I am reviewing my life. So we’ll go into the Areas for Improvement as well as Highlights.
Even this approach has been a huge improvement in the making over the years since I have a tendency to be highly critical of myself. Old me may have focused purely on what went wrong in 2024. But giving attention to what’s going well has really helped me take a more balanced approach to life that is not only more accurate but more aligned to my highest good.
As you know, I take a holistic approach with my health and life overall, so I also have things categorized.
Highlights (2024)
My top highlights were focused around health and finances. Two super important areas indeed! With these foundational wins shifting into auto-pilot, I’m excited about what I’ll be able to turn my attention to in 2025. See my 2025 goals below.
Note: I put my top wins in bold font below and a little background information in italic.
Health + Fitness Highlights 2024
- Got fitness back on track, working out about 1-3 times per week (most weeks), including more incorporation of strength training than 2023 + continued yoga + having more FUN *I was in a huge fitness rut post 2020 and really struggled to get into regular workouts, but I really focused on being more disciplined in 2024*
- Started doing 8-10k steps / day (which has helped me mind, body, and soul + Bolt enjoys the exercise)
- Met goal of being able to do a proper chaturanga + a mini push up (from plank position)
- Started incorporating more restorative (a bit) *I first started experimenting with restorative yoga in 2016 and LOVED it but fell out of doing it routinely – it’s something I’ve realized I want to bring back into my life*
- Overall increased strength
- Unexpected win: Able to do a reverse plank in yoga *I’ve had intermittent injuries / pains in my body that I believe may be trauma / burnout related, and one thing that has kept me from doing planks and side planks especially has been my wrist which almost caused me to quit yoga completely – but it’s getting stronger!*
Financial Wins 2024
*Finances has ALWAYS been a struggle for me, so I’m actually SO proud of myself for getting my finances together in 2024 – it has been a HUGE stress relief and confidence boost*
- Getting control of my finances and feeling confident about my money: both management and spending
- Saved $ / built up nest egg of savings
- Got a budget app / tool and actually set it up *I’ve been saying I’d do this for YEARS*
Self Highlights 2024
- Another successful Project GYST (Get Your Sh*t Together):
- Healthcare catch-up: Taking care of critical appointments (that I had been putting off for an embarrassingly long time)
- Finding doctors I actually love + re-establishing doctors after moving back from California
- Got back to my goal-oriented self
- Completed a personal rebrand + upleveled my closet / wardrobe (and stopped dressing like a slob lol)
- Did Olympian Paul Wylie Adult Figure Skating Workshop (and actually skated well – and also he’s one of my childhood heros so I was totally fangirling omg)
- Completed a Yoga Nidra training (so I can start offering Yoga Nidra in person and online)
Business Highlights 2024
- Joined Mediavine with TCL (this makes me one of 11k blogs on what is widely considered one of the top ad management companies for bloggers – out of 600 million blogs worldwide!)
- Figured out my LLC situation on my own to close my CA biz resulting in saving at least $2.5k (since I didn’t need to hire a lawyer to do this)
- Experimented with content self-challenges and completed deep research on industry best practices for 2024
- Participated in several local markets at Other Lands in Greenville, SC to sell my sticker art
Home Highlights 2024
- Invested in home: new dining table and shelves
- Invested time in finding perfect next home (SO many apartment tours + tons of research)
- Decided to stop settling for mediocre property management support and invest the time and money to live in a better situation
Relationship Highlights 2024
- Invested time in my family – more trips to Greenville, SC
- More time spent with family, especially parents
- Met up with my childhood FL BFF in Asheville, NC to catch up and meet her family
- Quality time with my friends near and far – in person and via voice note, WhatsApp, and beyond
- Made new dog parent friends at my apartment building (which turned into lots of fun walks with the pups)
Travel Highlights 2024
- Invested in one week in Kiawah Island, SC
- Started doing day trips to Asheville, NC
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Areas for Improvement (2024)
Most of my areas of improvement have already been re-framed into my 2025 goals below. I’ll make a couple notes of things that stood out to me as I reviewed my 2024 year.
NO MORE OVERWORKING
- My biggest FAIL in 2024 was letting my work absolutely steamroll me and take over my life in an unhealthy and unbalanced way.
- Things got crazy busy at my 9to5 around mid-year and for whatever reason I didn’t do as good a job as I usually do with maintaining my boundaries and work life balance. To the point that I had 20 unused vacation days by November, which is just wild and shows how much overworking I was doing, especially since I was still doing TCL after work hours.
- I let myself get to the point of operating on my heels, which is a highly reactive place to me and not conducive to planning out vacations, enjoying a good quality of life, etc.
- I will be more disciplined with enforcing better boundaries and creating some bare minimum non-work time in my schedule.
- Which brings me to my next point…
BALANCE
- Last year was all about work. I love to work, and I actually like to work hard. But after going through multiple phases of burnout, balance is not just a trendy buzzword – it’s a critical must that is essential to you not losing your mind and (I don’t know) actually enjoying your d*mn life.
- When I think of how I spent my time in 2024, all I can remember doing is working. I know I did have some downtime here and there, but I think it’s important to be more intentional about creating space in your day. Both space for active + passive rest but also space to literally do nothing and let your brain breathe and create space. Downloads from the Universe and connectedness to your intuition require space.
Travel More
- I didn’t travel much growing up, so travel isn’t natural for me. But I LOVE it!
- I had grand plans of traveling to NYC, Paris, and other fun destinations, but I never made any of them actually happen.
- I’d like to do at least one international trip in 2025 + other US-based trips and also sprinkle in not only more day trips but mini adventures in Charlotte.
Less overthinking, more action with The Chic Life
- In truth, I’ve really been struggling with this blog and my business and content overall for awhile now.
- I have SO many passions and interests, and the world keeps telling me that I have to niche down. And I just don’t want to f*cking do that!
- Over time, I’ve wondered if my stubbornness around not niching down has caused TCL to not be as successful as I truly want.
- But I think the real problem has multiple facets with two primary causes being 1) not producing enough quantity of content and 2) not speaking my truth / not being more opinionated and sharing my opinions.
- In 2025, I’d like to continue analyzing the way I can make TCL the best it can be but without letting that hold me back from shipping content and sharing my work
Experiment more with food (to get out of a food rut)
- Whilst I love my 80/20 approach to a health lifestyle and am happy with my healthy weight maintenance, I’ve definitely been in a food rut for awhile now.
- Eating the same thing repeatedly is fine, but I’ve been feeling a call to be more playful and experiment more with food. Which should also lead to more TCL recipes, and you know I love making those for you!
***
My 2025 Goals
Am I the only one who LOVES to see other peoples’ goals? Seeing what other people are setting for goals for the new year helps give me ideas of what’s possible for me. Sometimes other goal examples is a powerful reminder to dream bigger and to be more bold.
So here are my 2025 goals in case this helps inspire you or serve as solid goal examples for your planning.
My Top 5 2025 Goals
I use the Artist of Life workbook by Aileen of Lavendaire for my annual goal planning. It’s a very detailed book, but in the last couple years, she added a section where you boil your goals down to your top 3-5. I love picking top priorities with to-do lists, goals, intentions, etc., so I found this super helpful.
Goals are not ranked by priority – they’re all equally important to me for 2025.
Additionally, I am aiming to align all of my 2025 goals to my 2025 word of the year.
Travel – Goal #1: Travel More in 2025
- Go on at least one international trip
- Visit the beach more (is quarterly feasible?)
- Generally bring more adventure to regular life
- Places I’d love to visit (aim to do at least two):
- Disney World
- NYC
- Paris
- Kiawah Island, SC
- Hilton Head Island, SC
- Bali? Somewhere tropical for sure!
Health – Goal #2: Improve Sleep Hygiene + Wake Up Earlier
- Design and implement a night routine
- Actually follow-through on evening cut-offs
- Improve sleep (goal 8+ hours)
- Become a morning person (wake up 8am or earlier) + shift entire schedule earlier
Health – Goal #3: Level Up Fitness
- Maintain consistency (2-4 workouts / week + 8-10k steps per day), ideally:
- 1 yoga session / week minimum
- 1 strength training / week minimum
- Increase strength + flexibility:
- Do a full push-up
- Do a full pull-up
- Improve muscle definition (strength + visible muscle tone)
- Go ice skating more (once per week would be amazing!)
Self – Goal #4: Bring Balance to My Life
- NO MORE overworking
- Bring more joy and play into everyday life
- Bring more rest and restoration into everyday life
Business – Goal #5: Uplevel and Re-Focus TCL + Create More Content
- Focus on the impactful stuff (consider shifting to a focus on longer form content over social media)
- Give myself permission to say what I really want to and feel qualified to do so
- Create a higher volume of content
- Bring back public challenges
- Consider offering coaching again
Foundational: Round out 2024 GYST-ing and true up remaining key appointments + activities
- Dentist
- Dermatologist
- Regular haircuts
- Finish setting up new apartment
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Additional Noteworthy Goals / Intentions
There’s so much more written out in my Artist of Life 2025 workbook, including a more detailed list of goals by category, bucket list (100 fun ideas!), and more. Here are some other noteworthy goals from my workbook.
Note: Some of these are intentionally worded as questions because I want to think on them over the year before I commit, especially if they would put my top goals at risk.
- Move to new apartment and make it my ideal High Vibe Home
- Improve French skills by doing a daily Duolingo lesson
- Consider learning Spanish via Duolingo too
- Do I want to teach dance fitness again and start teaching yoga too?
- Start offering sound baths
- Get back moles removed *These make me so self conscious!*
- Hire my naturopath again
- Feed my creativity – more time for art and creative activities
- Spend more time in nature
- Do I want to do a ski trip?
- Create a retirement savings plan + target goal number
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Thanks for stopping by and checking out My 2024 Recap + My 2025 Goals. I hope these examples help you with your own 2024 annual review and/or new year goal setting!