Do you find yourself making the same new year’s resolutions year after year? We are a few weeks into 2018. Right about now, the new year buzz is dying down, and those big goals we were determined to tackle tend to fall by the wayside. This seems like the perfect time to share a few suggestions to keep your fire burning, help your resolutions stick, and make 2018 your best year yet!
Keep it Positive – As you mull over what you want to accomplish this year, emphasize what you want more of in your life, rather than what you want to cut back. Goals like “losing weight” or “quitting sugar” feel like a constant reminder that you have to make sacrifices, and that is kind of a drag. Alternatively, positive goals inspire you to welcome good things into your life, making them less rigid and easier to implement.
Write it Out – For many of us, simply not forgetting that we made resolutions at all is half of the battle. If you have that issue, our first tip is very simple: write your goals down. Putting a pen to paper is not only useful for referencing or accountability, writing helps you to manipulate and realize the idea. You may even go as far as to jot down what it will be like to accomplish that goal.
Schedule in Time – But what if you never look at the list you wrote? And who thinks about their resolutions in July? It is important to schedule some time to devote to your goals throughout the year. Depending on your goals and your bandwidth, you might do this weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Get your paper planner or your electronic calendar out and create some notifications for yourself. When you see this time blocked off on your schedule, treat it like any other appointment or deadline. Sit down, show up for yourself, and plug away at your goals.
Break it Down – It seems like resolutions tend to fall into two broad categories, the first being our big, bold, scary goals. Setting our sights on these big goals inspires us to push forward with our end game in mind. But it is hard to know where to start. Work out a way to makes these goals into manageable tasks, so you know what you should be working on when you set aside time to focus on it.
Make it Actionable – The second category of goals is the less intimidating but incredibly vague variety. Do you want to drink more water? Or do more reading? Accessible goals are important because we know that small tweaks can add up to huge change. Still, sometimes our goals are so nebulous that we blow them off or don’t know how to measure our progress. Narrow your goals down just a little bit and find a way to track how you’re doing.
Reflect and Revaluate – If you find that nothing seems to help you make progress with a certain goal, it may be time to reevaluate. Do you really want to start running, or are you just convinced you should? Sometimes we mechanically add things to our list because it sounds good and other people are doing it. When you let these things go you make room for the things you actually want.
Have you crossed off any goals off of your list yet? Or made some forward progress towards accomplishing a goal? Or have you forgotten what your resolutions were all together? Let us know! We are anxiously awaiting what 2018 has in store.
