Welcome to the first blog of 2023! Very best wishes to you for the year ahead.

Over the festive period, I was racking my brains to think of a fun challenge we could do as a family for the first few months of the new year. The idea would be a set goal for each day, and we would share updates to a group chat on how we were all doing. It was inspired by virtual family challenges we used to do during Covid lockdowns, and which I have written previous blogs about. It’s a nice way to have a bit of fun, connect with family members you might not be able to see in person, and maybe do something good for you in the process.

We decided to run the challenge from mid-January for 100 days. But the problem was, when discussing it with family members we just couldn’t agree on a goal to set. Walking 10,000 steps a day? Spending one hour outside in the fresh air? Running 5km? Reading 20 pages of a mind-expanding book?

In the end, the problem was obvious. The targets were too difficult. We had forgotten that age-old advice of not setting goals which aren’t achievable. It was deemed by a family council that if we set these kinds of blanket goals for everyone, we would all just end up miserable because we weren’t able to do them – or worse, sacrificing other areas of our lives in order to hit them out of a negative sense of competition. After all, this was supposed to be fun.

So we changed tack, and now everyone is going to set their own goal, which they know is achievable, and the emphasis will be on connection and sharing our progress with each other. Rather than pressure to complete whatever task it is every single day, we’re going to celebrate the days that we do get there.