When it comes to setting goals or new year’s resolutions, we often are at a loss for understanding where to begin and what goals or resolutions to even set. What resolutions do we have a chance at succeeding with and how are we going to reach the finish line ultimately.
You see, often it comes down to nothing more except setting the wrong resolutions or setting goals that are either too difficult, too many goals in total or we don’t have a proper plan in place to allow us to execute our goals properly.
When we take the time to formulate a plan, anticipate potential issues and get everything out of our head and onto paper, we can begin to accomplish much more and can begin to accomplish these tasks much faster and more efficiently. Maybe it’s breaking a bad habit, and perhaps it’s forming new positive habits.
Whatever the case may be, sometimes all we need is a little bit of motivation and some help planning to set the stage and get us ready to dominate. Today, I want to share with you 24 tips towards setting New Year’s Resolutions and achieving them or sticking to them.
This is an essential part of life, and I’m excited to dive into the details with you. Let’s begin.
24 Tips for Setting New Year’s Resolutions. These Will Keep You Moving Forward
#1- Don’t Set to Many Resolutions
Setting too many New Year’s Resolutions is a sure-fire way to get off on the wrong track. Keep things simple and don’t set too many goals. Doing so makes things overly complicated and more difficult than it needs to be.
Try setting a few fewer goals, keep them simple and keep them achievable. The less clutter you put into your mind clearer and more focused you can remain throughout the process. If you truly want this year to work better than last year. Keep it simple.
#2- Don’t Break the Chain
When I say breaking the chain, I’m referring to keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t break the train of thought or the chain of positive actions that are leading you towards soon to be a success. Keeping the momentum going is the number 1 tip I can give you.
While having an ending point in mind is critical, it’s also important to keep a hot streak when you have it. If you are getting things done and, in a rhythm, don’t stop or break that chain now. Keep pushing through.
#3- Use Mobile Apps to Help You
Mobile apps when it comes to setting goals and achieving them can be your best friend. They can keep you organized and help you control your time more efficiently. Additionally, you already spend countless hours a day on your phone.
Why not use those hours being wasted on something productive instead of wasting the time on something that’s not benefiting you in any fashion?
#4- Pick a Goal That Matters to You
Finding a goal that matters to you may be the most critical piece of advice I can give you today in this post. Having a goal that you care about the results that will come from it is essential. I call this is the beginning of finding your “reason why.”
When you successfully do this, the results matter and when the results matter, you suddenly start working harder towards the results. Find a goal and New Year’s Resolution that’s important to you to see ultimate success on your New Year’s Resolutions this year.
#5-Don’t Tell Everyone About Your Resolutions
Stop running around and parading and shouting your goals from the rooftop. You see, we have an entire post dedicated to this issue. When you broadcast your goals or New Year’s Resolutions, you are already feeling the “high” and positive feeling of informing people of your plans.
This is tricking your brain into thinking you have already accomplished something when you genuinely haven’t accomplished anything. Keep your goals and New Year’s Resolution closer to you this year and stop telling everyone about them.
#6- Pick Something Easy-Medium to Accomplish
Find something simpler to accomplish. Stop trying to train yourself to run a marathon next month. It’s not going to happen in nearly all circumstances, and it’s bound to derail you and make you feel as if you have failed.
Set goals that can be accomplished and that can begin to help you build momentum and steam towards a bigger goal that’s even more worthy of your time.
#7- Work on Smaller Goals in Smaller Step- 1 Month Increments
If you do have larger goals, learn to break them up in smaller bite size chunks. This could be by breaking them down by time, milestones or other tracking data that you can choose to use. Whatever the case may be, try and scale back to achieve more success with your New Year’s Resolution this year.
#8- Stay Organized and Track Progress
The importance of organization and tracking progress is so huge, it’s tough to even sum this up in just a few sentences. If you can stay clean, focused, organized and manage your time more efficiently, you would be shocked at how much you can get done daily.
Stay organized and start getting your thoughts onto paper or onto a mobile app to help keep you more organized. Trust me, this is easy to get started with and makes a world of difference.
#9- Keep Reminding Yourself of Your Resolutions
Find clever ways to stay reminded about the New Year’s Resolution. Use post it is, mobile apps, email reminders, tape on the bathroom mirror. Whatever you need to do, find a way to keep reminding yourself that you are chasing something and that you have a strong desire to achieve it.
Doing so can keep you motivated, reminded and on track towards achieving goals this year.
#10- Reward Yourself from Time to Time
It’s not a bad thing to take the time to treat yourself from time to time for small wins. Small wins should be rewarded. This way you can associate success with something you enjoy. Maybe when you hit a milestone, take the afternoon and go fishing if that’s your hobby of choice.
Maybe, you enjoy something such as rock climbing or hunting. If this is the case, as you begin achieving your New Year’s Resolutions, take the time to reward yourself for the positive things you are currently completing.
#11- Attempt to Stay Realistic with Your Goals
Remaining realistic with your goals is smart. Plain and simple. It’s the easiest way towards setting reasonable goals and gives you a chance at achieving goals in a reasonable amount of time. Don’t set goals that un-realistic or too far out of reach. The better you can get at this process, the better.
Take the time to think to yourself, is this possible. If it is, go for it. If it isn’t, readjust and maybe create a smaller goal.
#12- Find Your Reason Why to Keep Pushing
Things are going to get tough from time to time, and you have found ways to stay motivated and to keep pushing through. If you have no reason behind your goals, it’s going to be hard to roll with the punches and to get anything done.
When this happens, it’s essential for you to dig deep and really think about failing at your goals will impact you and the people depending on you, if any. Take a moment to self-reflect and find a way to keep pushing through the tough times.
#13- Keep It Short, Sweet and Simple
Keeping things short, sweet and simple is called getting **** done. When you make your list and New Year’s Resolutions, keep it super simple and aim for small wins. Big wins are difficult. Small victories that compound into big wins are not nearly as difficult.
Find a way to accomplish smaller, easy goals to move forward to the more complex and more difficult goals.
#14- Pick Something That Builds Confidence Along the Way
Find goals that start creating steam. You want your motivation and success to start building creating blocks of confidence. As you successfully complete one goal, you will be feeling good and ready to accomplish the next goal. Then the next goal. The key is finding ways to get yourself into the right state of mind.
When this happens is when things begin getting fun.
#15- Remain in Control of Your Goals
Always remain in control. These are your goals. Nobody else controls your goals. No one else should have a say in how these goals transpire and when it’s time to throw in the towel.
You know what you want and what you are chasing, and you must remain in control. Don’t beat yourself up over failed goals, just continue going after the critical goals and remain the one in charge.
#16- Don’t Give Up When It Gets Difficult
Perhaps the one tip on this list that falls into the category of “easier said than done.” I get it, and I’ve been there as well. Things will get tough, and it will be tough to keep the motivation going through some of the downfalls and failures that you are bound to hit.
When this happens, you must find ways to stay motivated, push through and begin anticipating the failures in the future. The more prepared you can be for failure, the better off you ultimately will be. Stay motivated and push through the failures.
#17- Create an Outline for Your Goals and Plans
Outlining and getting your goals onto paper, a mobile app or even a desktop application is the name of the game. Outline your goals. What are the milestones you are trying to hit? What time frame are you trying to hit your goals by?
Find a way to prioritize your goals and get them into some organized application that helps you see them more clearly. Doing this will keep you front and center and ready to attack your goals from day 1.
#18- Don’t Overthink Failures and Beat Yourself Up
When you mess up, let it be. Nothing is more counterproductive than wasting time dwelling over a failure. Spending time dwelling is still nothing but wasting time.
If your goal is to get up early in the morning and for the first week, this doesn’t happen, accept it, readjust and move on. Dwelling on these items only further derails you from your ultimate goals and success.
Embrace the failure, make an adjustment and let it go. Tomorrow is a new day, and we don’t have time to be wasting on the little things in life.
#19- Determine the Pros and Cons of Your New Year’s Resolutions
Determining the pros and cons of various goals is always priority number 1. We even have a post breaking down the pros and cons of specific goals that you can see here. Finding which goals deserves your time first is essential towards your ultimate success.
Find a way to pick smart goals and write down the pros and cons of each of these goals until you ultimately have found the best goal to go after. Once you have it, plan it out and attack as your life depends on it because ultimately, your life does depend on your success and effort in life.
#20- Plan- Don’t Wait Until December 31st To Begin Planning
Stop procrastinating. Procrastination kills all goals, and this comes down to simple planning ahead of time. Setting your New Year’s Resolutions on December 31st is a huge mistake. How are you going to have time to effectively look at all the potential roadblocks and obstacles you are going to hit?
How are you going to build your new goals into your calendar? The point is simple. Not planning of time is asking for failure starting from day 1. If you never start, you will never finish. Plan and stop waiting until the last second to get anything done. Start today!
#21- Review, Reflect and Pivot if Need Be
This is called effectively viewing the data. Look at your progress. Where are things going wrong? What can you do better? Where could you use an extra boost of motivation from? What’s holding you back?
These are all questions you should start asking yourself now. This is the number 1 way to start adjusting if they are needed. Don’t just throw in the towel on your goals.
Find a way to get make the changes needed and re-start your plan of attack. A fresh set of eyes can make a world of difference towards finally sticking towards your New Year’s Resolution.
#22- Attempt to Anticipate Road Blocks
Predicting what’s going to be in your way before you even begin is huge. If you know what to expect, then when a failure does arrive or gets in the way it’s not this giant surprise. Find a way to predict or take an educated guess at what problems you are likely to run into while attempting to achieve your goals.
When you do this, you are ultimately finding solutions without even realizing it. Solutions solve problems and achieving goals or New Year’s Resolutions require simple problem-solving skills.
Start predicting what’s going to be standing in your way to achieve the next level of success ultimately and to accomplish the goals that have been haunting you for years.
#23- Visualize Success and What It Looks Like
Picture the ending point. What does accomplish your goals look like? How will your life be impacted by your success? What’s your plan after you complete this goal and what’s it going to take to reach the finish line ultimately?
Visualizing is the process of using the law of attraction. You are willing success in your future until it eventually happens. If you can picture it, you can likely make it happen.
Start taking the time to picture the important finish line and start taking massive action to reach that point.
#24- Don’t Try to Pace Yourself with Others
Don’t try and keep up with others. This can destroy confidence and ruin your motivation towards achieving goals. Sometimes people are naturally faster at getting things done, but that doesn’t make you any less capable of ultimately achieving your goals.
Perform and take actions on your goals at your own pace and don’t let anyone else except you dictate what pace you will ultimately run at to achieve your goals.
The ball is in your court, and you need to control your own pace.
Putting It, All Together- New Year’s Resolutions Aren’t Designed to Be Easy but Keep It Simple
At the end of the day, New Year’s Resolutions were never designed to be easy necessarily, but they were designed to remain pure and achievable. It will get deflating and de-motivating to consistently fail or consistently fall short of our goals, we may lose that spark needed to continue achieving and setting new goals.
Stay smart with your goals, keep things simple and don’t give up and have the best and most productive year you have ever had. You deserve it!