3 Tips to Crush Your New Year’s Resolutions in 2022
The new year is only weeks away, and despite the trend of doom and gloom on the news these days, we can’t help but feel a little hopeful for the start of the year.
Surely, you’ve written down or at least thought about how you will make things different in the new year?
New year’s resolutions are great for motivation, but often we overload ourselves with the goals we want to reach, and burn out before the end of February.
How about making this year different? How great would it feel to look back in December with satisfaction, knowing that you followed through on your goals and plans, and have changed for the better?
Here are some tips and hacks for making this year the most focused, motivated, and most SUCCESSFUL year you’ve ever had.
Do Your Goals Resonate with YOU? – Finding Inner Motivation
Let’s start with the most important concept that will determine whether your goals go the distance or not – your inner values. It’s important to make sure that every goal you’re working toward resonates with you on the inside.
What do I mean by that? Well, you’re the only person you’ll always be around and have to live with for the rest of your life. You have to ensure that the life you’ve lived is not solely based on the opinion and goals of other people, even when they’re your family or partner.
So look at each one of your goals, and ask yourself, “if I stopped pursuing this goal, would my life still go the way I want it to in seven years?” Be sure to answer as honestly as you can. You’re just having a non-judgmental conversation with yourself.
It could be that perhaps the career path you want to pursue is only to get your family off your back, or the hobby you want to try will make you more popular, even though you’d never try it on a deserted island, with nobody around to approve (or disapprove).
Speaking of, another possible question to ask yourself is this, “if nobody knew or acknowledged this accomplishment (and I mean nobody), would I still pursue it wholeheartedly?”
If you’ve been honest with yourself, you may find that some of the goals you have actually mean very little to you. If this is the case, feel free to eliminate it, or modify it until it resonates. The importance of your goals is the quality, and not the quantity.
Break Your Goals Down from Big Picture into Pixels
Now that you have goals that resonate with you, and you have true inner motivation to pursue them, try to break your goal up into small and manageable pieces. If your goal is 100%, try to find the actions and objectives that make the 1%’s.
These small actions are the ones that you will do every day, or on a regular basis; you will also be using these actions to mark your progress toward your goals.
For example, if your goal is to read 52 books before the end of the year, you can easily translate that into reading one book per week. If you get even more detailed, you can separate each book into seven parts, and those will be the daily objectives that you aim for, to make sure that you finish the book in seven days.
Maybe it’s more complicated, like making friends, or finding a relationship. These goals are two-sided: they usually involve the consent and cooperation of the other person in question. In this case, the breaking down step will work greatly, because it forces you to focus on what you can do, instead of focusing on the end result.
If you meet and talk to a fairly large number of people within the year (and break it down into a weekly objective of talking to a specific number of people), it’s likely that you will find at least one or two friendships out of them. And the larger the amount of dates you go on, the more likely it is to find the man/woman of your dreams.
Find an Accountability Group to Keep at It
One powerful tool you can use to make sure that you achieve your goals and see them through to the end, is having a group, or partner, to answer to on a regular basis.
One good thing about the ego is that we absolutely don’t want others to see us in a negative light. Thus, when we announce our plans to a supportive individual who is also working on a similar plan, we usually tend to follow through, more so than when we pursue our goals alone.
Find someone who is not too close to you (maybe you can use an internet friend) that is working on the same goal, or a similar goal. Announce your plans beforehand, and make regular reports to each other on your progress.
I have tried this one with various goals to great success. I was able to follow through and finish plans, as I had to report my success or failure to someone else daily. Since I’d much rather report success, it helped me to actually pull through, even on days I didn’t feel like it.
You can use groups, or work with one partner (I find that working one-on-one with a partner is more effective, as it’s easier to ghost a large group who might not notice if you fell off your plans).
This Year Is the Time for True Change
Now you have the basic blueprint for affecting positive change in the new year. If you follow these steps, you’ll find that not only will you have the endurance to keep going beyond February, you’ll be fitter, richer, healthier than ever before.
Just remember to go for the goals that truly resonate with you, to break them down into actionable habits and routines, and to find someone to keep you accountable to achieve them.
How excited are you for the new year? Have you made any ambitious resolutions? Let me know in the comments below!
Author Bio:
Simone Morgan is a freelance writer who writes great content for the personal development industry.
