I love the beginning of a new year because it’s full of promise as you reflect on the past year and think of where you want to grow in the future. If you’re like me, you start thinking of goals as soon as Christmas is over (I know, crazy right?). I admit I have a problem not working or thinking of what comes next.
When the holiday is over, I start to feel refreshed and recharged, ready to get the new year started! The first thing I do when I sit down to write my goals for the year is take out my goals from last year. I like to reflect on where I was a year ago and what I envision for the next year of my life. I find that most of my goals are similar only need a little tweaking for more growth. I’ve found there are 4 strategies to take to make sure you reach your goals in the new year.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash
1. Be realistic. You can do anything but not everything.
When thinking about what you want to accomplish, be real with yourself and start small. It’s more motivational when you reach a smaller goal and can add to it for more growth. For example, if you want to exercise more but don’t exercise much now, instead of saying you’ll work out 5 times a week start with 2 or 3. By being successful at a smaller goal, you’ll feel more encouraged to then up your workouts to 5 times a week.
Also, be realistic with how much you can accomplish. You know your time commitments and know how much you can handle without getting overwhelmed and burnt out. If you overload too many goals, you could wind up not accomplishing anything.
2. Break your long-term goals up into short-term goals.
It’s good to have long-term goals for where you want to end up in the future that can’t possibly be accomplished in a day, week or even a month. These goals need to be broken up into mini or short year goals kind of like stepping-stones to accomplish that big long-term goal. It’s important to write the little goals down as a guide to how you will accomplish that large goal.
For example, you may want to start a teacher blog but have no clue about blogging. (This was me a year ago.) The end goal would be to have a teacher blog and short-term goals to achieve this might be taking a blogging course, planning out your blog posts on a calendar and writing a little something every day. Having concrete little goals makes the long-term goal less scary and more attainable.
3. Check in with yourself.
It’s beneficial to check in with yourself and revisit your goals. I must admit that I need to get better at this. (Maybe this can be a goal for me this year!) When you check in, you remind yourself what you’re working toward and the steps you need to take to get there. This holds you accountable throughout the year instead of writing down goals on January 1st and forgetting about them until the end of the year when it’s time to write new goals.
4. Let your goals be fluid.
When you check in with yourself, you can change your goals as they need to be changed. I believe that goals are meant to be fluid. If something isn’t working for you, change it! If you need to challenge yourself more, do it! This is your life and what you want out of it, make it your best year yet!
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