If you are anything like us, you have made many resolutions only to inevitably give up shortly after the New Year. We've compiled some tools to help you achieve your New Year goals.
Writing down our goals makes us far more likely to accomplish them, according to a study done by Gail Matthews University in the Dominican Republic. If we take the time to write down our goals there is a level of commitment. Otherwise they are simply dreams. Writing down our goals and putting them in a place where we can daily or weekly return to them is even better!
The best way to create a new habit or routine of any kind is to do it consistently for at least 30 days. Also tracking our consistency can help tremendously. Marking it off on a calendar, creating a spread sheet or checklist, or possibly using a mobile app are all great ways to track our progress.
Telling our friend or closest loved ones about our goals and asking them to help keep you accountable is of greatest value. It’s easy to self talk ourselves into not doing something but much more difficult if someone else is going to be asking about our progress. Possibly finding others that have similar goals to go on the journey together would be another great option. Be sure to ask someone who will be positive with any encouragement. Asking the wrong person could be just as bad as going it alone.
One of the ways we set ourselves up for failure is by negative “self talk”. We all do it and it is more destructive than anyone of us would ever like to admit. We all are our worst critics. Recognize when you are using destructive self talk and tell yourself to STOP! Replace those negative thoughts with positive ones as soon as you think them. Tell yourself TRUTH. Rather than saying to yourself you can’t do something. Replace those thoughts with things like “this is going to be hard but I can do it if I just stay consistant.” Replace “never going to happen” with “this will happen, it’s just going to take hard work.” If you do this, in the beginning it will seem as if you are chastising your inner self often, but the more you do it, the less and less those negative thoughts will come. Negativity is a pattern like anything else, consistency is the only way to break it.
Have you ever heard the expression ‘how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” This expression is so very accurate. Lots of time our goals or resolutions look daunting, but that is because we are looking at the whole picture. Instead try looking at the whole picture and then break down the steps it would take to accomplish what you are set out to do. For example; Getting your finances in order is a very vague and large task. If you break that down into smaller tasks though, such as, Start saving $40 a pay check, Create a monthly budget, pay for everything in cash using the envelope system, start paying x amount toward debt each month, etc… the task becomes less daunting and eventually within your grasp of obtaining!
Often we get stuck accomplishing our resolutions because we aren’t even sure how to go about accomplishing them. This is probably the most important element to staying on task. Recruiting expertise or a pre made program can be incredibly beneficial. Truth be told, we usually have these resolutions because we don’t have the practical knowledge to do any different or we have created such a hole for ourselves we aren’t able to climb out. Below are some of the best tools to get you started.
According to Nielsen.com these are the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions and the best tools we have found to help you in your endeavor!
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