Setting Goals for the new year!
Well it’s that time of the year again, New Year’s Eve has been and gone, time to make resolutions for the year ahead. This is the year I am going to get fit, this is the year I am going to be financially stable…. Sound familiar? Hands up if you achieved all your goals from the previous year. If you did, awesome news. Well done you. Hands up if you don’t even remember what resolutions you made in January 2014. Hmmmm.
The good news is that you are not alone if you have made resolutions repeatedly only to come to the end of the year and realise that you have not yet achieved them. A quick google search through statistic studies show that only a small portion of people (about 8-12%) actually achieve their new year’s resolutions. If you are one of those 8%, well done! That’s a great achievement. If not there is good news ahead. You CAN set and achieve your resolutions. It all comes down to a bit of planning.
I used to write a long list of resolutions at the start of the year, full of motivation and energy and I’d feel great that I had set goals for the year. I had all year to work on them right? Getting them down was a great start. I’d start them in a few weeks….right? However, before I knew it, January was over, holidays and summer were over, school started back, life got busy and that magical list got pushed aside. Halfway through the year I realised I hadn’t actually managed to cross off any of those goals, so frantically tried to get on top of them (now where did I put that list?) and before I knew it the year was over and I was back to square one. But then I got a little smarter with how I set my goals and I was happily able to cross off almost all of my list for a couple years in a row. So how do you do it?
I’m going to let you in on a little secret….KEEP IT SIMPLE! Rather than picking out a whole heap of things you want to do, focus on just one or two that are really important to you and that you want to achieve. Then work out how you are going to achieve them. The reason most people don’t meet their goals is simply a lack of planning. You’ve heard the saying “fail to plan, plan to fail”? That really applies when it comes to setting goals. Ask yourself how you are going to achieve your goals, make a list of all the steps you need to take to get you to that end goal and then turn each of those steps into a mini goal, kind of like a stepping stone. Make each mini goal specific and realistic and give it a timeframe. By setting small achievable mini goals you can see you are making progress towards that big goal and it helps keep you inspired and confident that you can achieve it!
Another important thing is to share your goal with others, make it public or just put it up somewhere where you can see it everyday so it is always on your mind. Remember that old adage out of sight out of mind? Keep your goal in sight every day!
Lastly make time to review your goal and your progress. This is a step that is most often left out and without it, we may end up missing the mark and not really sure why. Ask yourself regularly if you are still on track. What is working and what isn’t? Do you need to change anything? If you aren’t on track, why not? Perhaps you set the goal too high this time or your timeframes were too tight? In that case, don’t give up on the goal, simply re-evaluate and set new goals that are achievable and remember to pat yourself on the back for how far you have come. Most resolutions tend to be about behaviour change and new habits take a long time to learn so give yourself credit for trying.
Remember we can always help you with this process with our health coaching program. Good luck and may 2015 be the year that you achieve all your goals!
