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New Years Resolutions - Yes or No? Every year you can listen to the resolutions of those around you that will long be forgotten in a few weeks. Such New Year's resolutions are often associated with coercion and are therefore so easily doomed to failure. But if you want to finally implement changes, then read in this article how you can effectively and correctly set goals and really achieve what you want to achieve this year.
Losing weight, more exercise, a healthy diet, more time for family and friends, getting ahead at work - these are probably the most typical New Year's resolutionswho have on people's minds around New Year's Eve and New Year. The reason why these resolutions usually do not work is that very few set concrete goals.
Successful people have rarely just been lucky, but have always worked towards their goals. However, if you don't have a real goal, then you don't know how to get there. If you don't know how to achieve your goal, there is a high probability that you will never get there.
Why having goals is so important
When you have a goal in mind, you know what you want to achieve. You are motivated, have drive and are more satisfied. Today we live in a world with increasing pressure to perform, high expectations of ourselves, so that we tend to want to create everything but simply overwhelm ourselves. For us, that usually ends in enormous Stress.
But since we do not set ourselves a specific and only general goal, there are many ways to get there. If you constantly have to make new decisions, constantly postpone your goals and thereby tend to constantly stray from your haphazard path, you will probably go around in circles.
Basically, you don't need a new year, the beginning of a month or a week to set goals and change something. For many, such a beginning is for example Start of the weekBetter, turn of the year, new month, because they can adjust their minds better.
One advantage that the turn of the year brings with it is above all the euphoria and motivation that arise at the New Year to tackle your goals. Therefore it is good to use this momentum and the positive feeling for yourself. In order for you to be successful and achieve your goals, it is just important to set the goals correctly.
How can you set goals?
If you don't know how to start now, the first thing you can do is that you Divide your personal goals into categories can. We have already dealt with the review of your previous year, which for you is already a fundamental one Basis and makes your goal-setting work easier. If you haven't already done so, just take another look at the blog post and do it again.
Take a look at your important areas of life, for example:
- personality development
- Health and body
- Social contacts
- Job
- Hobbies and free time
- Finance
Now you can first think roughly about your general goals for these areas. You can ask yourself the following questions:
- What do I really want?
- What is important to me?
- What am I dissatisfied with?
- What am I ready to change this?
When it comes to your goals, first think long-term, i.e. what you really want to plan for this year. Later you can then subdivide your goals into small and, above all, realistic intermediate goals, also known as milestones.
By successfully achieving small goals, you get the incentive to stick with it and keep your motivation. After all, big goals in particular are not achieved overnight - and if they do, you probably have to think bigger.
Goals that can be set
Which goals you set yourself and what you want to achieve are of course individual. But to give you some impetus and to give you a direction, in case you can't think of so much, here are some examples:
personality development
Do you often come to appointments late or do you often have time pressure in the morning before you start the day because you sleep poorly and then get up too late, prefer to skip breakfast and then starve until noon? Then you can, for example, set the rough goal that you want to achieve with your Time management work and develop suitable routines for you.
Health and body
A classic wish is to exercise more or at all, to eat healthier or to eat less sweets. Also this project sounds like compulsion at first.
In this way you can already think about which sport you would like to do in the first step, which foods you want to include more or less in your diet. If you've been a candy junkie before, you can limit your sweets or consider a replacement that will satisfy you as well.
Social contacts
Surely you know that when you meet old friends and you finally want to see each other again to chat in detail, revive your friendship or your parents complain that you work so much and don't visit them enough.
Here too is Time management a keyword to keep appointments or evenings free and to block them in order to have a good time with your loved ones and acquaintances. Especially in times of WhatsApp, many people tend to cancel appointments at short notice if they don't feel like it or if they have something “better” in mind, which can destroy the relationship with others if they occur repeatedly.
Job and finances
Are you interested in a career change or do you want to train yourself to become even better in your area of work? Then you can first consider what opportunities you have within your company or look for external training opportunities and see in which direction you want to develop.
Perhaps you have long wanted to realize a certain idea or get involved in other ways. Think about where you currently stand and where you have or can create opportunities.
Saving money and consuming less clothes are also popular New Year's resolutions at the turn of the year. To do this, you should think about what unnecessary things you are buying and whether you really have to go out to eat several times a week.
To do this, clean out your closet and see what you are really wearing or just hanging in the closet for years. Then you can, for example, plan to sell the things online or at a flea market - or you can donate them to a good cause.
Hobbies and free time
Is there a hobby that you always wanted to start, like playing the piano or taking a dance class? Have you been planning to practice or learn a foreign language for a long time? There are so many things and desires that you wanted to fulfill.
Choose your favorite one and set it as a fixed goal. Of course, you don't have to learn something completely new if you're not interested. Maybe you just want to take more time to yourself again and read a few books that are already waiting in the closet?
How should goals be formulated?
By now you should have an idea of it and some inspiration on which direction your goals could go. Next, you should formulate your goals very specifically. The SMART method, which you may be familiar with from project management, is particularly suitable for this.
As described in the graphic, it is important that your Aim precisely, realistically and formulated attractively for you are so that you can measure them and plan dates for your goals to also Stay disciplined and follow the plan .
Let's go through this with an example:
For the category hobbies and free time, you have firmly decided to improve your English. Unfortunately, you never really took the time to do it and always postponed it until later, because it may also be more and more important for your profession and you also want to improve yourself personally if you want to finally tackle this goal in the next year.
It could look like this:
To improve my English from B1 level to C1 level. For that I want twice a week for 90 minutes practice with an online course. In the first half-year I want to reach the B2 level.
Set goals correctly: How do I meet my goals?
So that you can keep your goals and keep them in mind, you should Be sure to write down your goals. That also helps Overcome listlessness to be able to. When you know where you are headed, it is easier to carry out your plans. One study confirmed that putting them on paper is 40% more likely to achieve your goals.1
So that you stay disciplined and motivated, Imagine in concrete terms how it will feel when you have reached your goal. Positive pictures make you feel good and stay focused. If you do something on a day that leads to your goal, take 3-5 minutes that day and think about the details.
If you want to lose weight or build muscle, you can imagine how your environment will react to your weight loss or your toned body. Think about the smile on your face when you look in the mirror and finally wear your favorite jeans again, which fit perfectly on your body.
Set yourself small intermediate goals
So that you can achieve your goals and work on them all year round, you should have your Break down goals into smaller tangible interim goalsthat are easier to achieve than the overall goal.
Prepare your Sunday to-do's every week and plan your next steps. Ask yourself week after week what will bring you closer to your goal. This not only gives you an overview, but also allows you to make your own increase productivity.
If we apply this to our example that you want to improve your English, you can plan on Sunday for the week that you want to complete four lessons in your online course, for example. You may continue to ask yourself what else you could do to get closer to this goal.
For example, when watching a film or a series, you can set the original English sound with subtitles to practice or you can ask a friend to talk to you in English for half an hour. Practice is particularly important when it comes to languages.
If you stick to your weekly goals and achieve them, you will gradually reach your goal. In our YouTube video you will find out how you can best plan and define your goals so that you actually implement them:
Summary
In order to actually achieve your New Year resolutions, you have to set the right goals. To do this, you first have to deal with what you really want to change or where you want to go. In order for you to stay tuned, your goals need a concrete and measurable formulation that sounds attractive in your eyes.
Trigger your brain by precisely visualizing the situation when you reach your goal. If you don't reach for the stars, don't do too much at once and break your goals down into small intermediate goals, you will stay motivated and achieve success.
[1] https://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/study-highlights-strategies-
for-achieving-goals