If you are like many, some of your New Years goals have already fallen by the wayside. Instead of just packing it in for the year thinking you’ve failed for good, now is a perfect time to step back and reassess the situation. Here are some tips for how to do this and how to push through to seeing results from your New Years goals.
3 Tips To Hitting Your Goals This Year
#1. Pause and Get In The Right Frame of Mind
Before you do anything, you need to take a break. When we are emotional, we tend to be irrational and make bad choices. So if you are feeling bad that you have already failed on your goals, take a minute and step back.
Once you do this, you can begin to get yourself into the right frame of mind. The more time you have to calm down and take emotion out of the picture, the greater the chance you will be able to push ahead and come up with a new and improved action plan for your goals.
#2. Reassess Your Failure
You failed. It’s not the end of the world. Now that you are in the right frame of mind, you can accept the failure. But this doesn’t mean you accept it and do nothing about it. You just accept the fact that things went wrong.
Now you can work on figuring out why things went wrong. Did you try to do too much? Maybe you tried to lose 75 pounds in a week or max out your 401k plan with your first two paychecks of the year. In both these cases, you bit off too much.
Make small, achievable goals that you can build upon. If you want to lose weight, work on losing 1 pound a week. But don’t add a pound each week after you hit your goal the first week. Keep it at 1 pound per week until your new eating routine is a habit. Then you can adjust to two pounds per week. But don’t keep adding. Two pounds should be your limit.
When you make small goals, you create momentum which helps you to succeed in the long run. But just remember, there has to be a reasonable limit when increasing your goal over time. You will never be able to save 99% of your income each month and you will never be able to shed 20 pounds per week.
#3. Chart Revised Goals
Now that you have more realistic goals, be sure to chart them. You can do this in a variety of ways. For saving money, you can just look at your increasing balance every few months. For losing weight, you can look at the slimmer you in the mirror or through pictures. The key here is to constantly remind yourself of your progress and that you are achieving your goals.
This will help to keep you motivated when you are struggling, and we all know there will be times of struggle when it comes to reaching long term goals. The more data you have to rely on as proof of success, the greater the chance you will keep pushing through and meeting your goals in the end.
Final Thoughts
So, if you have failed and given up on your New Years goals already, don’t get so glum. Take this opportunity to hit the reset button and make the needed changes so that you can still see success. You can still be successful, you just have to choose to try again. Just don’t try with the same plan as before as we both know how it will turn out. Make some revisions and see success follow.