Every year, as December comes to a close, many people start promising themselves that the new year will bring them one step closer to achieving some sort of goal. Every year, we swear to make ourselves healthier, happier, better people, and though we have the best intentions when we make these New Year’s resolutions, most of us find it difficult to follow through.
It isn’t that we don’t want to follow through, but rather that we don’t quite know how to get to the finish line. It’s easy to talk about the goals we wish to set for ourselves, but we often forget that it takes more than just a commitment to being better: it also requires a plan of action. By setting smaller, more easily obtainable goals and delegating out the little things, you could be well on your way to reaching that New Year’s resolution in no time.
Choose your goal
Decide what it is you want to accomplish by the end of 2015. Maybe you want to lose that extra twenty pounds you gained during college. Maybe you finally want to kick those cigarettes to the curb for good. Maybe you want to get rid of that debt that’s been following you around the past few years. Maybe you just want to be healthier and incorporate better food into your diet and more exercise into your daily routine. Whatever your goal might be, write it down and make the commitment to yourself to follow through. This is the first step.
Break it up
One of the hardest things about making a New Year’s resolution is that it can be so easy to put things off or let our resolutions take a backseat to all the other things that we’re trying to accomplish. It can also be very easy to allow ourselves to get overwhelmed by the task at hand.
The simplest way we can achieve our larger goal is to break it up into smaller ones and to set dates on when we would like to accomplish them. For example, if your New Year’s Resolution is to take steps to eat healthier and exercise more, maybe you would decide to begin taking daily walks and cut out all soda in your diet by the time February rolls around. Once that goal is accomplished, you decide that you would like to start jogging once or twice a week in addition to your walks and you plan to do that every week until March. Then, you move onto the next goal. This way, you’re focused on the smaller pieces of the larger picture and you don’t feel too overwhelmed by what you’re trying to accomplish.
Delegate the little stuff
It’s easy to get bogged down by the little details when you’re trying to reach a specific goal, so find someone you can delegate those to. Do you need to find a gym near your home to start working on your daily exercise? Do you want to meet with a nutritionist and set up a diet plan to start eating better? Do you need to resolve a debt to help bring up your credit score? Do you want to find a product that will help curb your desire to smoke cigarettes? Chances are, there are minor details that someone else has the time to sort out and you can get that off your plate. It’s one less thing to worry about and one less thing to overwhelm you as you try to fulfill your New Year’s resolution.
Additionally, by bringing someone else along on your journey, you have someone who can hold you accountable, ultimately putting you one step closer to your end goal. This person can also help remind you of the deadlines that you’ve set for yourself and can encourage you along the way.
For so many of us, it’s easy to get sidetracked or lose motivation when we set our New Year’s resolutions. By giving ourselves smaller, more easily obtainable goals, and by delegating the small stuff to someone who will hold us accountable for those goals, there’s no reason we can’t all fulfill those resolutions that we’ve made for 2015.