For nurses who have not planned or created 2022 Nursing goals yet, you are in for another new year—the Chinese New Year! Treat January as your one month trial pack for the year 2022. Now, that you have a glimpse of what your life for 2022 will be, get a pen, a piece of paper and start planning for the rest of the year.

Our focus is NOW on what to expect this year.

Whatever happened in 2021, let this new year be a challenge in creating the best version of the life you want in 2022.

It’s time to no longer ignore the bigger goals and dreams that have been set aside and to finally focus on the things that lead towards success.

Keep away from distractions!

Now, let’s Reflect! Set! Go!

Here’s a video below talking about the stuffs here and a template at the bottom of this page as guide when creating your own 2022 Nursing Goals!

Reflect!

Reflecting on the year can be very beneficial for your self-improvement and your nursing career journey.

Let’s start with Impact and accomplishments: What were your proudest accomplishments?

• Think about your professional highlights from the last year.
• When did you feel you were at your best and making an impact?

Next: Learning & Risk Taking: What did you try something new and what did you learn?

• Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned from it.
• You see, growth entails taking risks and encountering some failures and while pushing yourself to change is hard, experimenting and taking risks is critical to your professional success.
• If you’re not pushing yourself and experiencing some missteps or failures along the way, you’re not growing and that becomes a problem.

Set!

Now that you are armed with what truly mattered to us in 2021 — both good and bad — it’s time to set goals for 2022.

1. Be reasonable about capacity. Don’t set two huge competing goals at the same time.

So if you are taking the PNLE this year and also thinking of taking the NCLEX, I don’t think both can be possible. PNLE itself takes up a lot of time and energy and NCLEX is also another big goal which is something that should be taken seriously.
Consider what is on your plate and how much you can reasonably add to it.

2. Make sure your goals are SMART.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Setting your 2022 goals this way gives you the direction, milestones and motivation to achieve them.

Let’s convert “Having the goal of taking the NCLEX this year” into a smart goal.

Specific – Who, What, Where specifically is involved?

Taking the nclex can yield two possible results, you can either pass or fail it. Of course, who doesn’t want to pass it, however, we have this tendency to think of “bahala na si batman” “come what may” ïf it’s for us, then it’s for us”. Never underestimate the power of our mind. So, specify it to really pass the nclex to have a positive mind and a positive vibe.

Measurable – How will I measure my progress?

How will you know that you are getting closer to passing the nclex? How will you measure it? To do this, you can measure by how long you need to study or what kind of books or sources you need to finish in a given period of time. Say for example, study within 3 months—for the first month, you go over with the theories, the books, the second month, you then move to test taking skills then the last month will be all about practical tests. So, as soon as you are done with the books, you know that you are making progress.

Attainable? If not, revise your goal!

In this part, you need to assess if what you just formulated is attainable, you’ll now consider the rest of the factors in the real world. Factors such as:
1. If you are also taking the PNLE this year, then taking NCLEX the same year is not possible since you still need to process it in a particular US State first to give you the eligibility and authority to test. So, this is the part where you need to make changes so instead of “Passing the nclex through studying within 3 months” you can change it to just processing the NCLEX then you start over with the SMART goal conversion.
2. Another is if you have a nurse job then 3 months would be too short. Usually, a study leave for NCLEX takes about 35 days or 1 month, then you can include that as well in your planning.

Relevant? If not, go back to your original goal!

Is your goal for this year relevant to your long term goal? If your long-term goal is to work abroad then definitely, yes it is relevant. This is the part that drives you back to where you should be because along the way you’ll be influenced by your peers, colleagues and may end up taking a different path.

Time-bound – How long should it take to accomplish this goal?

Set a specific deadline. How long should you finish this goal. It could be end of this year? Third quarter? It all depends in your situation.
You have to keep the momentum and if you’ve set it aside for too long, tendency is you’ll lose focus and motivation.

3. Make goals that are value-based.
   To keep you more motivated to pursue your smart goals, what is the reason behind this goal?
   Is it for your family. Do you want to give a nice retirment plan for your parents, for brighter future for you children?
   Whatever it is, when values drive goals, they have more motivational power.

Go!

In this step, you create and execute a plan to achieve your new-found goals. Take note, without a plan, nothing much happens. You have to do more than jump and hope for your goal to be reached.
Create a step-by-step action plan for getting what you want. If your goals are SMART, you should be able to break each goal into smaller, more measurable, time-bound chunks. Set dates for when you’ll complete these smaller chunks, and measure the progress toward your larger goals.

Let’s review. Go over your paper and let’s what you’ve got. Here’s a template to guide you!

That’s it! Just remember!

2022 Can Be Everything You Want When You Reflect, Set, Go With Purpose And Intention.

I know we are in the 3rd wave of Covid but if you have time, go through this video and “Reflect, Set, Go”

Put yourself on a path to take control of your life in 2022. You have another excuse to create one in the festivity of Chinese New Year!

And You deserve the best life, and it starts with you.

Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!