Success in the New Year How to Set Goals You Will Achieve

Are you looking to set yourself up for success in the new year? Facing the clean slate of a new year can be a little bit exciting and invigorating but also daunting and overwhelming. We all have great aspirations to do better than last year. Our goal is often to break old habits, forge a brand-new path and move toward the new year with a sense of enlightenment. This enlightenment, we hope, will bring us our hearts’ desires in the coming year.

Often though, we jump in and do too much of the right things all at once and wind up feeling overwhelmed. We eat all the healthy foods and then miss out on the delicious sweetness of a heartily frosted buttercream cupcakes. We get up at 5 a.m. to exercise for 7 consecutive days and quickly burn ourselves out and lose motivation. Setting yourself up for a stellar new year in January can prove challenging. When armed with the right mindset, attitude, tools, and resources, though, it is easy to move toward your goals and aspirations in a way that ensures success, productivity and most importantly, pleasure. The following tips will put you in the right frame of mind for success in the new year.

Look Back to Move Forward

Before you begin to think about where you’re heading in the new year, you must look back upon the past year and take an inventory of what you’ve accomplished, where your interests lie and what you can let go of. Letting go of things you thought you needed to accomplish in the past is key. This will free up your time, energy and space and allow you to work toward what you truly desire in life. 

If there is a goal that you were able to crush in the past year, take an inventory of how you made it happen. If you fell short of reaching a goal, determine the reasons why. Consider how you’ll move forward in the new year to ensure the same challenges don’t hinder your success in the new year.  

Are Your Goals For the New Year Attainable

We all want to make a million dollars and be healthy and happy, there is no question about that. When considering what will ensure your success in the new year though, it’s important to be realistic. Regardless of how hard we work, we’re likely not going to have Oprah’s bank balance any time soon. Setting unrealistic goals for yourself can be counterproductive. When we set high dollar goals and then watch our bank balance slowly creep up only to drop quickly when the car breaks down, we can lose hope. It is important and admirable to have big goals, but ensuring that they’re attainable in 12-months will do more for your self-esteem, perseverance, and mindset than all of the money in the world.  

 

Think Long-Term and Short-Term 

Short and long term goals are both important to your success in the new year. Long-term goals can range from 6-months to a year or longer. Often they include big-picture thinking and requires a lot of hard work and determination. A long-term goal for your business could be to land 10 new clients within 3 months. To make that goal happen though, you’ll need to come up with several short-term goals that will bring those 10 new clients to fruition. So within the first 3 weeks, your short-term goal could involve marketing your services online, sending daily email newsletters and offering valuable free content to your community regularly. These short-term goals can help fuel the fire that will lead you to your ultimate long-term goal. Getting those steps and action items out of your head and on paper is crucial for success in the new year.  

When in Doubt Write it Out

Piggybacking off of the long-term and short-term goal setting, you can’t keep the goals and action steps floating around in your head. Regularly getting your goals and actionable steps on paper are imperative. Reviewing, revising and evaluating your written goals is paramount in continued success throughout the new year. Goal-setting should never be a one and done thing in January. Writing out your goals in a way that works best for you, will be helpful. You likely won’t know the format that works best until you start making it a regular practice. Whether you journal in long paragraph form, bullet journal, keep a planner or sketchbook of your ideas, it is up to you. But you won’t know until you start writing, rewriting, working your goals and moving forward, which method resonates with you.

Tracking your progress as you move forward throughout the year is helpful not only in the moment but after the fact as well. Remember when you started off looking back to move forward, you’ll be grateful for a written account of everything you’ve done. This record will ensure your success in each new year to come. 

Working from a positive mindset, journaling and writing down your goals makes them feel more attainable. The act of writing them out attaches you to the goal and gives your subconscious something to work with. When you use positive language and affirmations in your goal-setting, you switch on the part of your brain that makes you feel as though you’re already living that reality. Use positive, “I am” affirmations as you write to change your mindset.  

The Working Toward Should Be Just as Good as the Having

We tend to sabotage ourselves and our success in the new year when we forget one key thing. Whatever work we do toward our goals should be just as enjoyable and satisfying as what we anticipate the actual completion of the goal will be. In other words, if you’re not happy doing the work that will bring you what you want, you’re not going to be happy with what you think you want. 

Similarly, if you’re wishy-washy on your end goal and it’s not something you are truly passionate about you’re not going to put in the effort to bring that goal to light. Be laser-focused when setting your goals. Dig deep and determine whether or not the goal you’re working towards is what you truly want. It shouldn’t be what your friends have or what your family thinks you should be. It has to come from you. The authentic you; the person you are deep down. If it is truly your goal, you will be 100% committed to doing the work. So much so, that it won’t truly feel like work. It will be enjoyable. Ultimately, that is all we ever want deep down anyway; to enjoy life. Success in the new year should be the culmination of all the things you enjoy. 

Going into anything new from an all-or-nothing perspective can be counterproductive to success. It’s important to work slowly and consistently toward your goals. Take small actionable steps, one at a time as you work toward your big-picture goal. This, coupled with the right mindset and a passion for what you’re pursuing, will ensure your success in the new year, and beyond.