Here’s to Setting — and Achieving — Goals in 2021

The tra­di­tion of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions dates back thou­sands of years, and while many aspects have changed, the core phi­los­o­phy of self-improve­ment has remained the same.

Most goals and res­o­lu­tions for 2020 quick­ly turned to sim­ply mak­ing it through, but we are look­ing to 2021 with cau­tious opti­mism and hope. Each year Bell­mont Part­ners sets agency goals. From busi­ness met­rics to our com­pa­ny cul­ture and team ini­tia­tives, we’re com­mit­ted to being good stew­ards in our com­mu­ni­ty and encour­ag­ing each oth­er to be the best ver­sions of our­selves. We all know that the com­mit­ment to per­son­al res­o­lu­tions often dis­si­pates by Feb­ru­ary, but per­haps putting ours out into the world will increase our chances of suc­cess. So here we go!

 

“My New Year’s res­o­lu­tions are to eat healthy, to be more grate­ful for what I have and to not be afraid to try new things. Obvi­ous­ly with every­thing that has hap­pened in the past year it real­ly makes you stop and appre­ci­ate every­thing you have and also makes me much more aware of how lucky I have been to be healthy and to have a healthy fam­i­ly, and I real­ly shouldn’t take that for grant­ed. Also, it’s shown me that life is short so you need to get out there and live life while you can and not be afraid to try new things!”
             — Bre­an­na Welke

“Bike more – Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy work­ing from home, but it reduced my bike-to-work com­mut­ing trips to almost zero in 2020. I’m look­ing for­ward to mak­ing a more con­cert­ed effort to get back out on the roads and try­ing out some new trails in 2021!”
             — Johan­na Holub

“I have a few pret­ty gener­ic goals for 2021, like drink more water and floss reg­u­lar­ly, but the hard­est one by far is get­ting up the first time my alarm goes off instead of hit­ting snooze until I have two min­utes to pull myself together.”
             — Julie Goulette

“Two of my goals for 2021:

1. Vis­it and spend time with my fam­i­ly, friends, co-work­ers and clients in per­son again – and hug them all! – when it’s safe to do so.
2. Try new activ­i­ties and explore new places when we can safe­ly do so. Like many, 2020 focused on stay­ing safe and healthy, and doing activ­i­ties that brought com­fort, so I’m ready for more adven­ture in 2021. My buck­et list is overflowing!”
       — Shel­li Lissick

 “My res­o­lu­tion is to carve out at least an hour each week to play the piano. It allows time to focus on cre­ativ­i­ty and dis­ci­pline in dif­fer­ent ways, and always reduces stress.”
            — Jen Bellmont

“My goal is to take more inten­tion­al breaks through­out the work day – things like: tak­ing my dog for a mid-morn­ing walk instead of wait­ing until night­time, actu­al­ly mak­ing a lunch instead of just grab­bing a gra­nola bar, or tak­ing a 15-minute after­noon screen break to read the cur­rent book I’m on.”
            — Bri­ana Gruenewald

“Two of my goals for 2021:

1. Read at least two books per month – now tak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for fic­tion, mem­oirs and busi­ness books!
2. Bike 800 miles on my new Nor­dic­Track sta­tion­ary bike – my usu­al met­ric for track­ing exer­cise is “did I move today?” so I have no idea if this is an over-ambi­tious or under-ambi­tious dis­tance. We shall see!”
      — Brid­get Nel­son Monroe
   

“I’m try­ing to read more books from oth­er gen­res than my usu­al (his­tor­i­cal fiction/memoirs) this year. My first book is Fri­day Night Lights from the sports category.”
            — Kalli Plump

“I did a “21 in 2021” list, but a few on the list include:

• Read 18+ books for fun
• Get a haircut
• Get the COVID vaccine
• Try a med­i­ta­tion app
• Save for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion in 2022”
    — Megan Derkey
  

“More inten­tion­al­i­ty with my sched­ule. 2020 kind of wiped out our nor­mal rou­tines, so using that as a clean slate to add stuff back in (or not) at a healthy pace.”
           — Michelle Griffith

“My 2021 Goals:

• Learn to play the gui­tar – Near the end of 2020 I picked up a gui­tar and start­ed learn­ing how to play for the first time. It’s been real­ly fun to learn some­thing new, and after a full day of Zoom meet­ings, play­ing music is a nice out­let to wind down that doesn’t involve a screen. I’m look­ing for­ward to stick­ing with it into the new year!
• Hope­ful­ly work with the BP team in per­son again – I’m opti­misti­cal­ly look­ing for­ward to safe­ly con­nect­ing with every­one in the same room again at some point this year.”
    — Syd­ney Schoeberle
  

“My res­o­lu­tion is to put down my phone and turn off my TV and read more books! Rec­om­men­da­tions wel­come. (I’m a big mystery/thriller fan – but open to anything!)”
           — Megan Anderson

“This sounds sim­plis­tic, and it is: One of my goals for 2021 is to get back to read­ing out­side of work – for both pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment and fun. As a for­mer jour­nal­ist, I’m still a news junkie, and dur­ing 2020 it was much too easy to fall into the habit of vora­cious­ly con­sum­ing deep-dive polit­i­cal or pan­dem­ic arti­cles on my iPad at night. But this year, I’m shift­ing away from end­less doom-scrolling and – hap­pi­ly – have already start­ed to nib­ble away at the heap­ing pile of books, both ana­log and dig­i­tal, on my night­stand. Next up: the lat­est Stephen King col­lec­tion, which like­ly has noth­ing on the real hor­rors of the last year.”
           — Bri­an Bellmont