If you’ve been here for a while you know I typically say something like, “I can’t believe that the we are already in the heading into the second quarter of 2022,” but in this season of my life I am finding some days as blurry as they are on pace. This season has held some really wonderful highs (like launching and leading the Grace + Goals Accountability Collective) along with some discouraging lows, but because of this it helped me be see where I was spending time well and where I wasn’t. When I set goals for 2022, I felt like I paced myself well and surprisingly enough I still feel that way today. Other than my January TL being very overambitious, I am proud of how I paced myself and that is a victory that I am taking into my Powersheets refresh. (Don’t know what Refreshes or Powersheets are? Start Here!)

There a few lessons that the Lord shared with me in this season that are guiding my mindset, my heart and my goals as we walk into the first quarter of they year. I hope these are as encouraging as they are to me as you start your refresh

Done is better than perfect – doing something imperfectly is better than doing nothing at all. It’s never going to be the “perfect time” to take a leap of faith + go where God is calling you to go.

When we don’t make time for the things that fire us up and refresh our goals, we are more likely to find ourselves exhausted rather than energized.

Imperfect progress is still progress, your progress may not look like what you had hoped but any progress is still progress!

Whether you are looking at your goals and are celebrating all you’ve accomplished, and it’s time to set new goals; maybe your goals are growing well, but you want to change them up a bit to tailor them to your current season of life; or you might be looking back at your 2022 prep work and feel like in 90 days your life looks entirely different and you want to do redo everything – no matter where you fall, that’s exactly what this refresh is for!

One last thing… before we get started, I want to remind you that here, we wholeheartedly believe that comparison is the thief of joy. Your powersheets and goals are going to look different than mine, just like mine are going to look different than yours. So I just want to remind you, as an honorary PSP gal, that we don’t compare here. If we look at our refresh through the eyes of comparison, we are missing out on the good things that God has prepared for us. So I just want us to remember that going into this conversation.

So now let’s dive into this refresh!

One of the tips that I have implemented in my refresh is from Lauren, one of The PSP Gals, she tries to make use of her stickers (especially the ones that she doesn’t normally use in her Tending Lists) and it is genius! So for example on this page, I used the category stickers next to each category, put a heart sticker that is color coded to my goals (more details on my color code here), and then used some of the little check marks and numbers! There is no wrong way to do your powersheets, but in my opinion you are missing out if you don’t use stickers.

I want to remind you that the most important factor in your refresh, and in all of your goal setting, is your honesty. It can be intimidating to evaluate your life if this season hasn’t gone how you planned or maybe your numbers are the same. My numbers stayed relatively the same, yet there are parts of this quarter that I see intentional change in small ways just like I see things that have either backslid a bit or stayed the same – that is okay!

This evaluation is done every 90 days so that we can note our little by little progress that is adding up so give yourself some grace as you work through this.

Prep Work Refresh

My life looks different than it did three months ago, as I assume yours does too. Having the opportunity to remind myself of what I want to say yes and no to in this current season of life is so valuable. Rather than start off by heading back to my initial yes/no prep work page, I did something a little new (for me.) I brainstormed my yes and no list on a blank piece of paper and went through this past quarter’s Month in Review pages to make sure the yes and no’s on those pages were in my list. After I made the list, I went back to look at my initial prep work to see if there were actions I wanted to add/take away. It is important to come back to your yearly prep work because that is what you determined mattered to you, and I tend to forget exactly what those things are when I don’t see them often. We can’t make what matters happen if we don’t know what matters to us.

By going back I was able to make sure that the things I am committing to do and not do were in line with my original list. This is also a great opportunity to notice what you set out to do or maybe haven’t been doing so you can start fresh this April! Here are my yes and no lists for this season:

On this page, Cultivate also gave us an exercise to try: a Time Audit. This allows you to see how you are spending your days to give you more of an insight on what priorities we are putting out/living first. I am really enjoying the activity, but making sure to remind myself that I am *NOT* an able-bodied person so I don’t misuse this exercise. You can check it out here!

P.S. I really missed the columns from last year on these prep work pages so I made my own! I loved added meaningful page boarders to the Prep Work Refresh and Keep Moving Forward pages as you can see in this photos above. I used the 2022 Cultivate Gift Wrap Sheets, Tending Tape from 2022 and 2020 collection, and then just used a little bit of old green scrapbook paper.

My Refreshed Goals + Action Plan

The BEST pro tip I can give you is sticky note this page (79) and do you action plans FIRST (80-81) before filling this out because sometimes your goals change as you work on the action plans.

Two of my goals are continuing on from my yearly action plans: Cultivate the Grace + Goals Community and Cultivate Consistency. I refreshed these goals from the yearly goals, but they are still connected: Cultivate Joy in this Season, Cultivate Joy While Living One Day At A Time; Cultivate Communication, Cultivate Security; and Cultivate Simplicity, Cultivate Home Rhythms. The brand new goal I added is Cultivate Courage.

I really loved last year’s refresh action plan pages, and I was somewhat unsure what to do with the 2022 refresh pages/lack of pages. So I used the “Plan for the Season Ahead” page with a major brain dump, and with the power of erasable pens I was able to move things around. I also relied heavily on my yearly goals. I have had seasons of my life where I treat my yearly goals as quarterly goals and then completely change things for the next 90 days, but this refresh held a bit of both – there is no wrong way to use your powersheets other than not using them, but lots of grace is the best way!

Your best in this season may not be your best in another, my word of the year is still cultivate, but the truth (word) I am clinging to for this next quarter is: Lean Into This Season.

Underneath each goal there is a highlighted line where I made note of where the action plans for these goals can be found. For the two of my goals it says, “yearly action: mini goal #” which will take me back to the pages where I broke down my action plans using the 3 mini goal wildcard page (to see a walkthrough of my yearly action plan pages head here.)

Then I had three refreshed goals that weren’t originally a mini goal in my yearly action plans, so I printed out the 3 mini goal wildcard from the Goal School wildcard library. (Now if you have a set of Powersheets you have access to Goal School, if you were gifted a set of Powersheets just email orders@cultivatewhatmatters.com and Team Cultivate will get your login for you!) I used only one mini goal spot for each goal, not a whole page for each goal.

For my first goal, Cultivate Joy in this Season, I am using the second goal setting wildcard. I didn’t need the top so I just cut it off and used the bottom. Then for my newest goal I decided that a break it down page would be most helpful so that’s what I did! To make these all easily accessible I taped them all down in the Break Your Goals Down lined page. I just taped the top of the cut wildcard and the break it down so I could flip those two up to see the full page on the bottom.

I hope that seeing my refresh helps you lean into yours!

In case you didn’t know, here on Living the Chronic Illness Life you now have access to the

🎉 Grace + Goals Resource Library 🎉

which helps you tailor your goal setting and powersheets to seasons of uncertainty. You can find all the info here!

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Cassie Nolin is a married spoonie who lives the chronic illness life with EDS + Co. (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and it’s comorbid conditions.) She challenges others to choose grace over guilt while goal setting, and is in ministry part time serving the online community through Grace + Goals and The Spoonie Study. She loves planting, confetti, hand lettering, and sharing the hope she has found in Jesus. Her blog, Living the Chronic Illness Life, is in the top 100 chronic illness blogs and in 2019 she launched her podcast, Chronically Cultivating, where Cassie encourages women to live authentic and intentional lives through their diagnosis’ not in spite of them. She is on a mission to help other women learn how to trade guilt for God’s grace and control for confetti! You can learn more about her at www.livingthechronicillnesslife.com

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