How to achieve your New Year’s goals
The New Year is a great time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. Many people will set New Year’s resolutions, goals, and intentions. Despite the “fresh start effect” that happens in the new year surveys have shown that only about 9% of New Year’s resolutions are actually successful. These tips will help you set goals that you can actually achieve in the new year.
- Give yourself a fresh start or clean slate.
- If you’ve failed in the past or struggled with keeping your goals, you are human. Use this new year as a clean slate where anything is possible, and past failures have simply been learning experiences.
- Focus on daily practices.
- Our goals are often big, and the outcomes are out of our control. Break your big goal into small practices you can do each day or week. If you want to improve your health, try adding 5 minutes of movement, or an extra serving of vegetables each day.
- Try setting approach goals.
- Many of our goals focus on the things we are doing wrong. Try to adjust your goals to add more good things into your life. If your goal is to watch less TV, try switching it up to spending more quality time with your loved ones. This helps our brain focus on the positive and not fixate on the things we are trying to avoid.
- Create an environment that supports your goals.
- Much of our behavior is unconscious and driven by habit. If you’d like to make some healthy changes, create an environment where it is easy to make healthier decisions. For example, if you want to eat more vegetables, keep vegetables readily available at home and work. Creating the environment we need to succeed will not only help us be successful, but will also help us feel less exhausted and overwhelmed.
- No failures, only feedback.
- If you are struggling to keep the goals you have set, or experience a setback, try to remember that you are simply learning what works and what doe not. Treat each habit and new goal as a science experiment and allow yourself to learn from the data.
- Get support.
- People who recruit friends and family or hire a coach to help them reach their goals are often more successful than those who do not. Having a support system can help you to be more successful and to have more fun along the way.
- Celebrate your progress along the way.
- Setting and achieving goals can feel like a bit a of a chore. Remember to pause every now and then and celebrate your small victories. Did you eat vegetables each day for a week? Give yourself a high five or have a one song dance party. Each success is worthy of celebration.
Setting New Years resolutions can be a fun way to plan for the future. You can achieve your goals by breaking them into small, manageable tasks, building your ideal environment and celebrating your success. As always, start where you are, and give yourself lots of grace. Each step in the right direction is improving your life and bringing you closer to success.
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