Each year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions, hoping to spark positive change. The recurring themes each year include a desire for weight-loss, become more active with workouts, better finances, and learning new things for personal and professional development. Take a look at the top 10 most common new year goals. Any of them look familiar to you?
- Exercise more
- Lose weight
- Get organized
- Learn a new skill or hobby
- Live life to the fullest
- Save more money / spend less money
- Quit smoking
- Spend more time with family and friends
- Travel more
- Read more
How many did you choose for 2022? Again perhaps? Arggggh. We are all guilty of the resolution loop one time or another.
Setting the goal and making it happen
We all have the best of intentions with the start of a new year. Once the champagne fizz dries out, many people struggle to make good on their plans. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 46% of people who made New Year’s resolutions were successful. That means over half of the people who set a goal for the new year will fail!
Naturally, we don’t want to be in the camp of folks that fail to achieve their aspirations and dreams for 2022, so let's gather a plan for following through on those goals.
If you want to make your New Year goals happen this year, follow these steps:
1. Set a goal that motivates you
You would be surprised how often people set goals that are not for themselves. These goals could be dictated or coerced by a parent, spouse, or employer or peer pressure.
It is imperative that the goal you set is important to you and only you and that there is value or benefit for you in achieving the goal. It is these two things that will provide the reason and willingness to take action. This is also known as motivation!
Thus, it’s a safe bet if your resolutions align with the following:
- Your goals
- Your priorities
- Your dreams
- Your aspirations
Not only should you align around your inner-most desires, but you should also make sure the resolutions align around your top priorities. This will lead to a “must do” attitude.
2. Be specific
It’s often easy to set bad goals that could lead to poor follow through. Try out SMART goal setting! This framework can help you craft better goals.
SMART goals are:
- Specific - Articulate the resolution as clearly as possible. For example, quitting smoking is better than being healthy. While “being healthy” is great, the wording can be interpreted in many ways.
- Measurable - Quantify your resolution if possible, i.e. I will lose 10% of my body weight.
- Attainable - Choose a goal within the realm of possibility, but yet challenging. Making 100 friends this year would be amazing, but probably pretty hard to do. On the other, making 10 new friends is doable.
- Relevant - Keep it relevant to your priorities and goals. See motivation section above!
- Time-sensitive - Give yourself a time-frame in which to achieve a goal. A deadline will instill some urgency and provide a time when you can celebrate your success.
There are many planners on the market that have smart goals built into weekly tasks. You can also search smart goals in google and find tons of downloadable worksheets to use for free. Try it now!
3. Break up big goals into smaller goals
Many of us tend to be grandiose when it comes to resolutions. We have the best of intentions and may accidentally take on a goal that is too big to achieve. Thus, it’s helpful to divide a big goal into smaller goals that are more achievable.
Let’s say you are the leader of an alien race, and your resolution for 2022 is capturing the planet Earth. That is a huge goal!! You can’t just tell your intergalactic fleet of spaceships “take over planet Earth” and expect success.
You have to chunk up this big crazy feat into smaller more management accomplishments. Therefore, you can take the tasks and spread them out over the year. Focus on the steps, not the big goal. Don't forget to celebrate the smaller tasks along the way!
4. Write down your goals
While it’s great to have goals, it is crucial to document them in some way. With so much going on in our adult lives, they are easy to forget. While that may seem silly, we are human, and it is human to be easily distracted and forgetful.
Writing down your resolutions helps you clarify what it is you want to achieve. It forces you to make decisions and be precise with your words. Along with this written intention, action needs to be taken to achieve your resolution. Having a written account of your goals is a constant reminder to take action.
Here are a few ways you can document your resolutions for 2022:
- Write them in a journal
- Draft an email to yourself
- Store in Evernote or some other note-taking tool
- Create a vision board and hang it on the wall
Aside from the above steps, it's also a great idea to share your goals with others.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
And remember, if you fall off, get back on quick!
Rome was not built in a day.
