Setting a New Year’s resolution has the potential to completely change your life, but that’s only if you have the dedication and discipline to follow through. While it is easy to set goals during the New Year while everyone else is doing it, you’ll find that many people fail to obtain those goals or lose motivation during the year. The main reason why so many people fail to cross the finish line is because they often don’t begin with the right mindset, set unrealistic goals, or do not create a plan of action. Actually achieving a goal takes careful planning and solid justifications that you can keep going back to when you lose motivation or find yourself sliding off track.
Set Realistic Goals
No matter what your goal is, you want to make sure that you can conceivably achieve it. Setting a reasonable goal doesn’t mean that you can’t accomplish everything you want, but that you should focus on all the different variables that are likely to affect your ability to get to the finish line. For most people, motivation wanes and external factors change. Planning your goals with those facts in mind means you’ll be much more likely to actually achieve the resolutions you set. For example, if your resolution is to lose a substantial amount of weight, setting an unreasonable goal weight within a specific time-frame means that you will likely lose motivation when you don’t hit those unachievable numbers. However, if you set a weekly goal of the recommended amount (1 to 2 pounds per week) you’re more likely to stick to your plan, and are less likely to go back to bad habits as you continually see results.
Plan To Succeed
Create a path for yourself to succeed. Find a way to get to your ultimate goal by learning more about what it takes to get there from your current position and breaking it down into small steps. This way, you’ll be much more likely to attain the small goals and continually climb from there. If your goal is to lose weight, you’ll want to set yourself up with a diet plan and exercise routine that you can actually stick to so that you know how you’ll get to your goal weight. Focus on setting up your macros in a way that correlates with your specific goals. Many people have difficulty increasing their protein intake, so using supplements like isolate protein can be an important step to getting them where they want to be.
Create Accountability
Support systems are an excellent way to get to the goals that you want to reach. Let people in your life know about your goals and have them keep you accountable. It’s also a great idea to create shared goals between you and the people you love and trust. This way, you’ll be able to share motivation and get to your goals more quickly by creating a cooperative connection and by pushing each other to succeed.
Turn Motivation Into Discipline
While the beginning of the New Year seems to infer that motivation is an intrinsic quality that a person possesses, it is actually a resource that can easily be depleted. Rather than relying on your motivation to get to your goal, force yourself into a routine so that you create habits instead. Using discipline to create a habit may seem difficult to understand at first, but it can make the difference between starting a goal and finishing it or relapsing into your old ways. You’ll want to make sure that you set yourself up for success by changing the way your brain thinks about your mission. Keep your mental and physical well-being in mind, but make yourself uncomfortable to create lasting and impactful change.
The New Year is an excellent time to turn your life around by using shared motivation and the power of routines to turn your goals into lasting changes. Fulfilling difficult goals takes hard work, discipline, and consistency, but can make all the difference in how you see yourself and the heights you’re able to reach.