It’s the time of year where everyone begins setting and discussing their new year’s resolutions. The start of a new year can feel like the perfect fresh slate to begin working towards new goals and becoming your best self. Unfortunately, the reality of new year’s resolutions is you’re often setting yourself up for failure.
Instead of setting aspirational resolutions this year, try this strategy for setting and achieving your goals.
Break it Down
Trying to set goals that you’ll accomplish over the course of a year is unrealistic. It’s hard to anticipate exactly how your year will go, and if you fail early, it’s easy to give up and wait until next year to try again. Instead, work to break your goals down into manageable chunks.
Create weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals that you can work toward. Instead of setting your goals for the entire year at once, start with the first month and quarter. As you progress and work through your goals, you can set new ones that build on what you’ve accomplished.
Be Realistic
While it’s great to have stretch goals, it can be frustrating when you set unrealistic goals. Instead, keep your goals reasonable and attainable. Yes, they should make you work harder than you are today and should challenge you. However, they need to be achievable.
When setting your goals take the time to consider how realistic they are. Is this something you can reasonably do in a set time frame? If not, consider extending your timeline or breaking your goal down into smaller milestones.
Make it a Habit
This is a great opportunity to instill new habits. Explore how you can implement healthy routines into your daily life that help you reach your goals. For example, if one of your goals is to be more present, make daily meditation part of your routine. Similarly, if you’re hoping to be more appreciative, implement a daily gratitude practice.
In order to form a new habit, set time aside in your daily schedule and add reminders or alarms to your phone. You can also tack your habit onto your daily routines such as your morning or bedtime routines.
Hold Yourself Accountable
How you hold yourself accountable depends greatly on your personality and motivators. There are a few different things you can consider:
- Tell your friends about your goals and ask them to check in on you and your progress
- Share your progress on social media (be sure to post about your challenges and how you’re working through them in addition to your successes)
- Create a wallpaper for your phone that reminds you of your goals
- Set up alarms and calendar reminders for when you need to complete tasks
- Check-in with yourself weekly to revisit your goals, assess your progress, and determine how you’ll overcome any roadblocks
Don’t Wait to Get Started
Instead of waiting for January to begin working toward your goals, begin to implement your healthy habits right away. Habits take time to establish and it helps to get started sooner. You’ll probably fall off a few times — it happens to everyone. Instead of using that as an excuse to give up, recommit and get right back on track.
It’s all about trying your best and continuing to work toward your goals, no matter how many times you may veer off your path. Don’t punish yourself for losing a streak, reward yourself for getting started again!
Achieve Your Goals in 2022
New year’s resolutions can sometimes be uninspiring when you feel like you can’t achieve what you set out to do. This year, set reasonable, attainable goals instead of new year’s resolutions and get started sooner. Turn your goals into a habit by making them a sustainable part of your everyday life.NextSelf helps you reach your personal goals with guided courses and daily challenges on themes such as saying no, setting healthy boundaries, and imposter syndrome. Download NextSelf to get started.