While new year’s resolutions might only last as long as the time it took to make them, setting achievable goals and intentions to be the best version of yourself at the beginning of a new year is a great place to start.
And, who doesn’t want to keep being the very best they can be? While there is no magic formula for instant change, setting achievable objectives and making them a part of your routine can be a great way to see long term transformation.
So, whether you’re looking to make lifestyle changes such as a healthier diet, running or starting a meditation or yoga practice, feeding your mind with more books and less scrolling, or you’re looking to really reset and embark on a new career path, here are some strategies and techniques for staying on top of your goals and hitting your targets.
How Do You Eat an Elephant?
One bite at a time.
If you’ve set yourself an outcome that seems pretty big, the only place to start is where you are now. Give yourself small morsels to swallow, and before you know it, you’ve eaten more than you thought. Progress is the best process to success.
A great way to approach this is to attach a new action to a previous habit. Then, make the new action a simple change, at least for the first week, so you don’t overwhelm yourself.
Some examples:
- Replace one fast food lunch with a healthy meal from home
- Cut down two sugars in your coffee to one
- Get off your transport route 2 stops early and walk the rest of the way
- Take the stairs instead of the lift
- Replace 1 round or 2 of drinks with a soda water
These are small changes that will require you to be conscious of your choices but are not hard work.
If you want to get serious about breaking old habits and creating new ones, join some of our fellow Clicksters who transformed their lives after reading Charles Duhigg’s best-seller, the Power of Habit.
Don’t Be Hard on Yourself
The quickest way to giving up is negative self-talk. It’s important to set firm, clear goals, but you should enjoy working towards them. Keep yourself positive and give yourself little pep-talks along the way. Reward yourself for achieving milestones on the journey towards your goal. If self-talk seems a little lonely, bring some friends along for the ride. Talk about your goals with your friends, they may help you stay accountable and on track. Talk to them when you need support and let them celebrate your wins!
Make it a Part of Your Day
Often, resolutions are often discarded is because we are too busy with life. A great way to ensure you can dedicate some time to your goals (and actually get them done) is by making sure that they line up to your everyday life. It’s likely that you’re going to have to give up something you already do to make time to work on your new goals, so making sure that they work in with your current lifestyle is definitely important. So, if your goal is as simple as getting your daily step count to 10,000, then find a way to fit this into your regular day – take the stairs, get off the bus or train one stop sooner or buddy up with a partner and catch up on conversation while you go for a morning or evening walk.
See Your Goals, Visualise Success
Visualising yourself in your new reality is a powerful tool and really helps with positive thinking and keeping yourself on track. It isn’t just some fanciful concept, research done by Dr Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California found that you are 42% more likely to achieve your written goals. So, stick post-it notes on your walls, get crafty and create a vision board in your bedroom, or a corkboard at your work station, or just simply write your goals down and place them somewhere you can see them every day.
Make Fear Your Friend
Finding the energy and motivation to get started on your goal is often a bigger challenge than the goal itself.
That’s where ‘fear setting’ rather than goal setting may come in handy. Tim Ferriss outlined this concept in his TED Talk defining your fears instead of your goals. If you have the time, this TED Talk is well worth the watch however, here are some of the key tenets of his approach to ‘fear setting’.
- Define your fear. Write down your concerns and be specific.
- Prevent. Come up with a list of ways you can prevent your concerns from happening.
- Repair. If the things you fear do eventuate, make a list of the action can you take to mitigate or minimise the damage.
- Consider the benefits of attempting your goal or partial success. Write down all the benefits you will experience as a result of giving your goal a go. These could be improved confidence and the things you can learn.
- Consider the cost of inaction. According to Tim, this is the most important step. Ask yourself if the status quo is maintained, what is the impact in 6 months’ time, 1 years’ time or 3 years’ time?
Tim actually used this approach to learn how to swim, speak multiple languages and dance his way to a competition win.
If you’re starting 2024 with the right mindset, you can achieve great things and tick some of these recurring resolutions off your list, making way for some new and exciting things for 2025.
