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Happy New Year everyone! I’m jumping right on in with a post all about how we can actually achieve our resolutions and goals we’re setting for ourselves.
If you’re someone who struggles a bit to accomplish the goals you’ve set, don’t worry, I’m here to show you how to break them down so we can kick 2019’s butt! Ya with me?
I highly suggest getting a planner or piece of paper to get things started! Let’s get to it!
PS – I sorta use resolutions and goals interchangeably, since I wanted this to be not only for the New Year, but anytime you have a goal your working on. It of course applies all year round for anything you’re striving to achieve!
What Are Your Resolutions or Goals?
First of all, decide what exactly your resolutions are. It’s okay for these to be more general, they’re mainly your jumping off point. For me, my two big ones are to make a full time income from my blog, and to take better care of myself. I’ll show you exactly how to break your resolutions down into actionable steps.
I’m assuming if you’re reading this, you probably have a good idea of what your working on this year, but I figured I’d throw this point in, just in case. And now, we’re ready to break them down!
Make Them Specific
Now that we have our more general resolutions, it’s really important to convert them into specific goals so you can track, break them down into steps, and measure your progress or success. If they are too general, they can be interpreted a million different ways, and are much harder to track your progress. Monitoring your progress can help in keeping you motivated to keep on working towards your goal! Also, general goals are much harder to figure out specific steps to take to work towards them.
Assigning numbers to your goal is an easy way to have it be more specific and achievable. Think about how you can change your general goal into something specific and number related, so that you can more accurately track it. You don’t have to assign numbers, but it certainly can help. I have plenty of examples below in case you need some ideas on how to get specific!
For example, let’s say you have a goal of getting healthy in the New Year. That’s a pretty general goal, and could mean pretty much anything. Are you looking to cut out sugar? Lose weight? Develop an exercise routine? “Getting healthy” is too general, so you can’t track it, making it much harder to achieve.
Instead of “getting healthy”, you should change it to something much more specific that you want to work on, like: lose 20 pounds, limit sugar intake to 25 grams per day, exercise 2-3 times per week, or whatever you have in mind for getting healthy.
Some other examples:
- Declutter my house becomes throw out 5 items per day.
- Save money becomes put $100 in my savings account with every paycheck.
- Take better care of myself becomes spend 30 minutes each weekend caring for myself with a bath, face mask, or whatever makes me feel good.
- Read more becomes read 1 book per month.
- Make new friends becomes find 1 social activity to do per week.
- Learn something new becomes find 1 local class to take per month, like cooking or an instrument.
- Be more present becomes limit myself to 1 hour of screen time each night.
- Eat out less becomes limit myself to 2 meals eaten out per week.
- Drink less becomes limit myself to 2 drinks during the weekend.
Hopefully this gives you an idea of how to make them more specific! If you still need help though, feel free to email me so I can help make your general goal a specific one!
Make Them Realistic
It’s important to keep in mind what is actually realistic for you and your lifestyle. If you set goals that aren’t realistic, you’re only setting yourself up for failure, which means you won’t achieve your goal, and you’ll be demotivated.
If you only make $5000 per month, and require $4500 for expenses, it’s unrealistic and unattainable to want to save $1000 per month.
Or if you want to start working out as your goal, but are starting from very little to no exercise, it may be unrealistic to set your goal to workout every day of the week. You’ll burn yourself out and it will likely become an unpleasant experience, leaving you feeling unmotivated, unsuccessful, and not wanting to continue working on this goal.
It’s okay to want to push yourself and aim high, and I’m not suggesting go super easy on yourself, but keep it realistic so you actually can achieve them.
Only Set Goals For Things You Can Control
This is along the same lines of setting realistic goals, but I wanted to touch on this as well. Certain goals you may have in mind are out of your control. You can control the actions your taking towards that goal, but perhaps not the outcome.
For example, maybe you have a goal to get a new job in 2019. That’s not something you have direct control over. However, you could make your goal to apply to 3 jobs per week. That is something you can track and take actionable steps towards every single week.
Hopefully the outcome will be what you want, but if you set your goal for something you don’t control, it’s a lot harder to track and manage.
Break Them Down Into Actionable Steps
Okay, so you have your specific goal, now what? Now, it’s time to break that goal down into steps you can take every day, week, month, or whatever the timeframe that makes the most sense.
If you break your goal down into steps, you can track them. This helps you feel accomplished as you take these steps towards your goal, which keeps you motivated. It also helps celebrate the little wins you have along the way!
You can monitor your progress, and see if you’re on track to reach them by the end of the year, or your desired time frame. I like to write steps down in my planner so I can check them off each week, and so I’m reminded to keep working on my goals. A bit more on that later.
For example, say your goal is to lose 20 pounds in 2019. So let’s break that down. You can divide that number by the amount of weeks there are in a year: 20/56 = .38, meaning your goal is to lose .38 pounds per week.
Now you know exactly what you need to lose each week in order to achieve your goal. For that goal, you probably should also add an additional step of what you’re doing to lose the weight, but you get the idea.
Or maybe you want to save 10,000 next year. You could break that down by week or month, in order to track your progress, and know if you are on track to reach your goal.
When working towards something, it can be very helpful to put the focus on the steps your taking, and less about the outcome. We can’t always control the outcome, like I said before, but we can always control what we’re doing to work towards that. It allows you to consistently put in the work, and hopefully the outcome is achieving what you’ve set out to. But, even if you don’t, you know that you worked towards it, and maybe it will just take a little more time or the outcome is different than you expected. Either way, you put in the time and energy into trying to reach your goal. And it’s important to see and note the progress along the way because success isn’t just about the outcome!
Track Them + Write Them Down
Writing them down on a regular basis definitely helps keep them at the forefront of your mind. I have various goals I want to achieve throughout my planner, and each week I write down whatever actionable step I need to do that week so I see it whenever I look at what I have going on that week.
You get a little push of motivation every time you get to check something off that you achieved as well, or at least I do! I also feel so motivated writing down the steps, and it’s a constant reminder. I also have trackers in the back note pages of my planner, to see where I’m at for various goals.
It’s important to track them so you can see if you’re on pace to reach your goals, or maybe you have a little catch up to do. Or maybe this will show you that you set your goal too high, and need to reevaluate a bit.
Set Times To Reevaluate Regularly, Alter If Necessary
Too often people set goals in January, only to completely forget about them by February. But in order to reach your goals, you need to be thinking about them a bit more often than once per year. This goes hand in hand with tracking them + writing them down from above as well.
Set a time, maybe once a month, to evaluate how the previous month went. Was it too easy? Too hard? Were the steps you assigned realistic, or maybe they weren’t? Now would be the time to take a step back and change up the steps you need to take in a week or a month to something that fits better with your lifestyle.
Or maybe you fell off the wagon, and just need to have a clean slate and start fresh. Much better to start over in February, than to just forget about it all year. Life happens, don’t beat yourself up over it and mark yourself a failure. Get up, dust yourself off, and keep on going!
Reward Yourself
Easily the most fun part, but it’s a great way to keep the motivation going, and feel like you’re working towards something small while working towards your big goal.
It’s a great way to celebrate the little successes you have along the way, which like I said, are just as important as the big ones! The rewards can be whatever you’d like them to be, but something that keeps you excited to keep going and makes you happy.
You could even make them something that helps you going to reach your overall goal. For example, if losing 20 pounds is your goal, after the first 5 you could treat yourself to new workout gear. Then every time you workout in it, you’ll be reminded of how far you’ve come, and that you’re totally capable of achieving this goal!
Well, that’s all I’ve got so far. It’s advice I plan on following in the new year, and am hoping this time next year we’ll all be feeling quite accomplished! Even if we didn’t reach our goal, but still took some steps to get there, that is still a WIN. There will always be life, complications, distractions, and other things that get in the way. The important thing is to not give up, and to keep going. Despite any set backs, it’s always going to be a WIN if you just keep on going.
