New Years Resolutions and Goals – Why Make Them?

Do your New Year’s Resolutions or Goals look something like the cartoon above? Would you like to make lasting progress on some of the things you list out to accomplish every year? Keep reading and I am going to try to convince you why goal setting is so important and how you can stick with it longer than the first week of January.

I have been making New Years resolutions for years. My husband laughed at me for a while saying that most people never realize half of their resolutions. I determined to find out why. I began to see that for me it had a lot to do with lack of follow through. I made a nice list at the beginning of the year and then never revisited the list to evaluate my progress. I began to set goals after that and then sit down with my husband and see which ones were physically and financially possible. It really helped to have someone who knows me well to bounce ideas off of. I tend toward biting off more than I can chew, so to speak. We revisit the list every couple of months to see if we are on track. Since we have been doing this, we have seen so much more accomplished off our list. It is amazing how fast life passes and if you are not intentional, the things you want to accomplish with your life will pass you by.

Here are five things you can do to help you have success setting goals and accomplishing them this year.

• Brainstorm all the things you have been putting off that you want or need to do. Just write everything that you can think of until you run out of ideas. These can be personal, business, school and family oriented goals. Divide the list into short-term (meaning this year) and long-term goals. Whittle the short-term list down into the ones that you can reasonably accomplish THIS year.
• Bounce the list off of someone who knows you well. Let the list sit a day or two. Revisit. Tweak.
• Divide out your goals over twelve months. I have used a notebook in the past with headers for each month. Set manageable steps to help you achieve your goals. If it is a large task, break it down into small steps.
• At the end of every month, evaluate your goal sheet and mark off the ones you reached. Move the goals forward that you didn’t accomplish or if it was something that you no longer want to achieve, just remove it from the list.
• Take time at the end of the year to evaluate your list again. Look at all you accomplished and be proud of yourself. If there were many unreached goals, try to look at the reason behind that. Did you try to aim too high or set goals that were too large? I would rather have five small goals that I accomplish than 10 large goals that I never make progress on.

I hope this has challenged you to get your goals down on paper and begin making them a reality. Don’t let your hopes and dreams never become a reality because you didn’t take the time to plan for some of them.

Look for a post about my goals next week.

Tell me about some of your goals this year?