At the beginning of a new year, many of us consciously reflect and review the past 12 months, we think about the goals we achieved and perhaps measure how well we achieved the new year’s resolutions/goals we likely set 12 months before. If you often find yourself failing to sustain your new year’s resolutions, you likely need to break them down to make them more attainable. As we come to the end of January I explain how to do this below.
After making sure the goals you’ve set are realistic and achievable, it is a good idea to break your year down into stages so that you can regularly review your performance against meeting these goals. Ideally, you should review your goals quarterly to ensure you are on your way to meeting them by the end of the year. This also ensures that for example if you have any sudden financial changes or personal emergencies you can factor these changes into your goal progress for the end of the year.
At Morgan Latif, we believe strongly in the importance of goal setting to help our team members plan how they’re going to reach their achievements. We recently gave each employee a copy of the self-help book ‘Atomic Habits’ which advocates changing habits. It uses “a framework called the Four Laws of Behaviour Change, Atomic Habits teaches readers a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones.” I believe that if we focus and pay attention to our daily habits we can slowly change these to help them align with the goals we want to reach, for example, if someone’s yearly goal is to read 5 books, they may create a habit of reading for 20 minutes every day to ensure they achieve this.
There are so many ways we can all structure and plan our goals so that new resolutions become lasting habits and long-term changes as I’ve already explained. I’ve listed the top ways below:
- Write down your goals in the present tense.
By writing our goals in the present tense (as if we have already achieved them) we can trick our subconscious mind to find the easiest path to achieve them.
- Break your goals down.
As I explained above, breaking down your goals makes reaching them less overwhelming and more attainable, for example, if you have a goal to save £10,000 in one year, it’s much easier to break this goal into 4 months of saving £2,500 to see how you are measuring against this goal.
- Believe them
What becomes real in your mind will become real in your life.
- Give yourself incentives for achieving goals.
If you are lacking motivation and for example, your goal is to save a certain amount of money, each month you reach this goal, set a budget to treat yourself to incentivise your goals.
- Find a proper reason for achieving your goals.
A common goal is owning a home, it’s important to think about why this is a goal. Is it a superficial reason such as to impress friends and family? Or something personally meaningful like raising a family? The more personal and authentic reasoning you have for your goals will help you to achieve them easier.
Remember even if you begin to struggle for motivation and lose momentum with making progress with the habits towards your goals, every new day is a chance to reset and focus on what you want to achieve in life. You only lose if you quit.
We’re interested in our reader’s thoughts on this topic and how you are making your new year’s resolutions become lasting habits. To discuss further please contact @roseharper
