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5 Tips for Setting Achievable New Years Resolutions: New Years resolutions do not have to be something you give up on by March! Use these 5 tips to set the best, most achievable goals for the coming year.

How to Set Achievable New Years Resolutions: 5 Tips

How to Set Achievable New Years Resolutions

Use these 5 tips to set achievable goals for the new year. Set achievable new years resolutions and don’t bonk out in March – by setting the right types of goals, you can keep working and achieving all year long!

So a few days ago I claimed that I was “Anti New Years Resolution”. And today I’m telling you how to make New Years resolutions. Total hypocrite, right? Well, not exactly. I do not set New Years resolutions, but I do sit down at the end / beginning of every year and do some goal setting to determine some achievable ways to make my life better in the coming year. Have you ever heard of SMART goals? I feel like it’s like a workplace management type thing, but I really think they’re onto something! SMART goals are:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

I believe that your New Years resolutions or New Years goals should follow a similar structure. I cannot tell you how many times I wrote down the resolution “lose weight” and then maybe thought about what I ate for a good 11 days before getting bored and giving up. Please, please, please do not make your New Years resolution be to “lose weight”. I promise, it won’t work.

So from one avid goal setter to you, here are my tips for setting achievable goals (okay, fine, you can call them New Years resolutions if you really want to) for the coming year.

Get real

Be honest with yourself. Take a hard look at your life and reflect on what you actually want to change and what you are capable of changing. The best thing I ever did was admit to myself that I wasn’t ready to change something. This helped me to focus on coming at the goal (weight loss) from an other angle until I was ready to make that change. It is OKAY to say “I’m not ready to give up soda” or “I’m not willing to get up at 4am”, but you have to be honest with yourself, and if you want to achieve your goals, don’t set yourself up for failure by making the goals you won’t actually do.

Set multiple small goals (and make them specific)

If the big picture is that you want to save money, take a hard look at your budget and determine an amount that you can comfortably save per month without infringing on your lifestyle and set up an automatic payment into a savings account to do that. Additionally, you can set a goal like “1 meal out per week (excluding special occasions)”. This feels so much more achievable than “spend less money” <– boring, or “save $10,000 this year” <– OMG scary!

Set check in times throughout the year

A year is a long time for my short attention span, and I need more specific deadlines. Likewise, I will set up 1 goal to achieve by March, then incorporate goal #2 to achieve by June. This means you do not have to change your lifestyle all at once. Little changes are infinitely easier to make, and when they all add up, they eventually equal one big change.

Set yourself up for success

Okay, so imagine you want to start working out at home, but literally have no tools to do so – how easy will it be to give up? Every year losing weight / building fitness and saving money (recently joined by disconnecting from social media which you’re clearly not doing because you’re here, but it’s okay because we’re glad you’re here!) are the top resolutions across the country. I mentioned earlier that setting up an automatic withdrawal to your savings account is an excellent tool. It’s right there in your banking app and it takes about 30 seconds. If you have the tool, it does the resolution for you, but if you don’t, then you’re left to your own devices and, if you’re anything like me, will choose that cute sweater over actually manually transferring the money over.

Fitness goals are a little trickier, because they often require some level of financial commitment as well. People might tell you to start with running because it’s “free”, and I will tell you: hahahahahaha running is anything BUT free! But the point is, you have to give a little to get a LOT, and if you make a financial commitment, you’re likely to be more motivated to follow through. There are a ton of ways to do this, but a few of my favorites are sign up for a race, build a home gym (I swear you can do it on a small budget!), sign up for a type of group fitness like CrossFit, Barre, Spin or whatever you like, purchase P90X or Insanity videos and get a workout mat to give yourself a devoted workout space, the possibilities are endless, but the point is that you need to set yourself up to achieve your goal; you can’t just expect it to happen magically.

Share your goals

There is a reason that every time I sign up for a marathon I post it all over my Facebook feed and only 50% of that reason is to brag. Okay maybe 75%, but that remaining 25% is because sharing my goals holds me accountable. I am a people pleaser and I swear that if I do not follow through, I am letting down the entire world. Now, I am not narcissistic enough to think that this is the case, and chances are you don’t care nearly as much about what people think of you as I do (I hope not…cough, cough, my 2016 goals…), but chances are you have 1 or 2 important people in your life that you respect and you know will kindly and gently, or with tough love if that’s what you need, hold you accountable. Share each goal and ask them if they’d mind checking in with you. My girls at work do it for me all the time, and I swear it helps!

What are your goals for 2016? What do you do to keep yourself on track?

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5 Tips for Setting Achievable New Years Resolutions: New Years resolutions do not have to be something you give up on by March! Use these 5 tips to set the best, most achievable goals for the coming year.

About Ari Ziskin

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Ari Ziskin is our resident expert in all things fitness, dance and flooring trends. After five years of blogging at Ari’s Menu, where she was featured on sites like The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, Ari decided to pursue writing full-time. Nothing makes her happier than sharing her knowledge to help people create their gyms and begin their fitness journey.

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