Self care and Goal setting Girls trip to Calgary
The year of 2022 was a year of lessons and life changes, and after what we all know was a crazy couple of years. I wanted to enter 2023 with intention and a feeling of refresh more than ever! Below is a four day itinerary based on mine if you ever want to do the same to not only nourish your soul - but your stomach!
DAY ONE
Self Care:
Visit the cafe: Park by sidewalk citizen
Browse Shelf life books
Soak up the Central library design and architecture
Be blown away by the energy and food offered at the Bridgette Bar for dinner
Suggested order: roasted cauliflower, ricotta dumplings, maple bbq rainbow trout, wood grilled beef strip steak + the banana pie
Goal Setting:
This is when we took the time to reflect on past year. We asked ourselves a ton of questions revolving around the highs and lows and how we could use those to shape our next year. We used this blog as a guide. The key here is that even if it feels repetitive, you answer it anyways as you will find each answer has a similarity but gets deeper and deeper each time.
DAY TWO
Self Care:
Gobble up some fuel via bagels and baked goods on your way to the mountains at Rocky Mountain Bagels in Canmore
Walk around Lake Louise enjoying the skaters, outdoor bar and ice sculptures
Check into the Fairmont Banff and have a drink at The Rundle Bar with the most breathtaking view
Have the best cheese fondue and schnitzel you could image at the German restaurant Waldhouse
Goal Setting:
We took this day to create categories for this year’s goals and what we want to accomplish for each. For example, some of the categories and goals were:
Family life: regular date nights, undivided mommy-daughter time, dedicated family of 4 time
Home: easy to follow cleaning schedule, organize basement, live with less
Mental health: regular therapy, quiet morning routine, gratitude, lucky girl attitude, create positivity
Work: be more consistent, utilize batching/templates, improve processes/systems
Finance, physical health, me time, food, friendships, romance and travel were my others
DAY THREE
Self Care:
Slip into the Fairmont robe and treat yourself to breakfast in bed
Head to the pool and experience the year round outdoor pool with views second to none
Make your way to Upper Kananaskis lake for a hike made for any level of hiker
Drive to Mount Engedene Lodge and be welcomed with a 5 star charcuterie spread
Check into your glamping tent and then head back to the lodge to hang by the fire, play board game and enjoy the deeeelicious included dinner
Goal Setting:
Today, we wrote out how will we accomplish each and assigned a timeline for each. For example:
Family life: dedicated family of 4 time = no work meetings on Thursday nights or Sunday mornings
Home: live with less = pick 50 things in 5 days to donate
Mental health: regular therapy = have it in my schedule for the same time and day every month
Work: be more consistent = create a content calendar and batch a whole month at a time
When you have 11 categories each with their own couple of goals, it can be overwhelming, so we assigned each category to a month where we will deep dive into that goal and hope that sets us up on the right path for the remainder of the year finishing off on a well rounded note where we gave attention to each area of our lives.
DAY FOUR
Self Care:
Breakfast that is included with the Mount Engedene Lodge stay, from here you can grab the included packed lunch and explore the activities around the Lodge, but we had other plans…
Kananaskis spa massage, followed by the hydrotherapy sequence pools with a break for lunch
Suggested order: Adobo pork steam buns
Head back to the city and enjoy Carino for dinner
Suggested order: Your favourite kind of wine or the servers suggestion, Karage to start, whatever the special is (hopefully still the curry carbonara, the dessert trio and a tea chosen through sniff sampling!
This restaurant is truly special - first of all, it is Japanese and Italian fusion and secondly, the staff will be grateful for the opportunity to happily, humbly and passionately chat your ear off with a impressive amount of knowledge regarding each food and beverage offering.
Goal Setting:
Now that you have your goal categories, what goals fall into each and when you will really focus on each, it is time to make a priority/action list from each goal category for this month. For example, if my focus on mental health was allocated to March, I am not going to wait until March to start looking for a therapist or booking appointments. This month (January) I am going to get some in the books and then the idea for March would be to reflect on how it is going, if it is a good fit, should the time or day change, should the frequency change? This is also a great time to dive into any resources my therapists have given me that I just haven’t been able to get to.
Next, think of encompassing words and numbers for your year and find images that visually represents your goals and your strategies to achieve them. Put it all together in a dream board and pick the place you will keep it so that you will see it every day! This can be done with magazines and a picture frame of digitally. I personally got the images from Pinterest, made it into a collage on my Instagram stories, downloaded it to my photos and it is my phone background! I will share it below :)
Lastly - we used this evening to dream about how and where we should do this type of trip again to reflect on 2023 and plan for 2024!!
I hope this gives you some inspiration to do a trip like this for yourself! If going to the mountains isn’t something achievable or desirable right now - try a weekend at an airbnb in a beautiful small town just outside where you are located, for example, here in South Western Ontario, I love Stratford and Elora! It was a wonderful opportunity to feel like I am taking control of my life, rather than my life taking control of me, that I am truly grateful for!
As promised, I will sign off with my dream board :)
