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How to Achieve Your New Year Goals
The start of the new year is the perfect time to turn a new page, which is why so many people partake in a New Year’s resolution. It’s time for a fresh start and a great opportunity to change bad habits and establish new routines that help us grow psychologically, emotionally and physically.
Of course, resolutions are much easier to make than to achieve! Come March, some of us will have abandoned our goals and settled back into old patterns. Despite having good intentions, we may not always know how to stay true to our resolutions. In preparation, here are several ways to help you design a plan to achieve your New Year goals.
Reflect & Reason
Goals are a personal object of ambition or effort. When drafting, remember we are complex beings and different from one another. Reflect on the personal (relationships, health), professional (money, career objectives), emotional (mental health) and spiritual (self-actualization, self-care) areas of your life. Whether you prefer to reflect alone or with friends and family, write down the areas you’d like to improve to keep them top of mind.
It’s necessary to be reasonable when focusing on self-improvement. The surest way to fall short of a goal is to make it unattainable. For instance, resolving to “never” drink coffee again is setting you up to fail. Instead, strive for something attainable, such as avoiding it more often than you do now and choosing to hydrate with alternatives like Absopure All Natural Spring Water.
SMART Goal Setting
Write down five SMART goals for the areas in your life you are committed to changing. Use the SMART acronym to set goals.
- Be specific. The list of goals should answer the questions of what you want to accomplish and why it is important.
- Make sure the goal is measurable. Quantify the objective and avoid relying on someone else to measure your success.
- Ask yourself if the goal is achievable. Even the most challenging goals can be accomplished, but it takes true organization and dedication.
- Determine the relevance of your ambitions. Relevancy is particularly essential when setting professional goals.
- Time-bound means setting a specific deadline for when you’d like to have your goal accomplished. Deadlines also help us maintain motivation and urgency to achieve our intentions.
Visualize It
Visualizing the outcome can help increase confidence. Affirmations, vision boards and reminders all contribute to the completion of a New Year resolution. Post your goals where you can see them every day. When we write down our intentions in a notebook and then close it, we risk the possibility of never revisiting them. Posting them on sticky notes, writing them down on a dry-erase board or mirror can remind you of the objective.
Tell Someone You Trust
Research says you are more likely to achieve your goals by sharing your plan with the right person. Telling a friend, family member or mentor does more than keep you accountable, it heightens motivation, simply because you care what the person thinks of you. For example, telling a mentor or manager about your hopes to get promoted could light a fire under you more than a peer or friend.
However, who you decide to tell depends on the ambition and the person. While “evaluation apprehension,” the term researchers use to describe anxiety caused by being supervised, could make you more driven, it may also hurt your ability or willingness to crush a goal.
When you go public with your goals, you’ll likely get instant gratification or even the same satisfaction as completing the actual target. Which could result in being less determined to stick with it—don’t tell everyone!
Track Your Progress
The key to efficiently and effectively achieving any goal is to develop a solid plan and keep track of your progress. Write down each small success because short-term accomplishments will encourage you to keep trying. For example, if your initiative is to lose 30 pounds, set aside smaller goals and focus on losing five pounds in a specific period of time until you reach the main objective. Planners, journals, whiteboards or the Notes App on your phone are always reliable for detailed goal tracking.
It takes time for a new activity to become a habit and even longer to become a part of your personality. Achieving your goals won’t happen overnight, remember to be patient and persistent. Set your objectives, write them down, design a plan and share it with a trusted mentor. As you ring in the New Year, take some time to reflect on where you are and what you want to become—oh, and remember to celebrate your wins.
Happy New Year from Absopure!
