It’s only a month into the new year, and studies show that 90% of resolutions and goals have already been abandoned.
The excitement of a clean slate has worn off and motivation has stalled.
Do you already feel defeated?
Don’t get stuck in feelings of failure. There’s plenty of time to accomplish all that you envisioned back in December.
It’s time to revive your goals for this year!
Even if you’ve gotten completely off track, there’s no reason why you can’t achieve the plans you set out for the year. As Lara Casey of Cultivate What Matters says, “There is nothing magical about January.”
You can start working toward a goal at any time. It doesn’t have to be January or the first of the month or a Monday. Just get started.
I’ll be the first to say that accomplishing goals is hard, especially if you’ve got big goals. It takes commitment, perseverance, and focus to keep moving forward.
Sometimes my biggest challenge is sticking to it when I’m seeing slow progress.
Our attention span as a society is getting shorter all the time. We’re used to getting results at the click of a button.
So when progress is minimal, we get anxious to see those bigger results.
How do you reignite that motivation you felt when you were mapping out all those awesome goals? How do you recognize even the smallest steps forward as movement in the right direction?
Here are 4 steps to get you fired up to revive your goals:
1 | Reflect on the past month.
If you’re feeling a little let down by how quickly you let go of your ambitions, it’s a good idea to first figure out where you lost sight of the path.
What worked well as you jump-started your goals this past month?
Maybe you had strategies in place to get you started or you did prep work ahead of time.
Take a look at the ways you initially set yourself up for success.
Then look at what didn’t work.
Did you start giving in to small temptations that snowballed into giving up altogether? Perhaps you stopped completing those daily action steps that make a giant goal feel manageable.
Common goal-setting roadblocks:
- Biting off more than you can chew: When we kick off a new year, it’s easy to be a little overzealous. You’re going to work out every day AND stop eating sugar AND organize the entire house AND spend less money AND be the best mom and wife ever in the history of the whole world! Starting small isn’t a bad thing and it doesn’t mean you can’t achieve a lot over the course of the year.
- Choosing goals because you think you should: Just because it seems like everyone else on Instagram is training for a marathon doesn’t mean you need to. If your goal isn’t supported by a deeper reason (aka your “why”) then it’s much harder to stay motivated. More on that in step 2.
- Your goals aren’t specific or measurable: Setting a goal to read more is a great start. But how will you know when you’ve achieved your goal? How can you form a plan without any way to track your progress? Instead, you need to set goals that can be measured. Reading 20 books by July 1st means that you’ll know when you’ve hit your goal. It’s also easier to break down into action steps (see step 3 below).
Now that you’ve analyzed what worked and what didn’t work, it’s time to get your goals ready for action.
By pinpointing where you lost your motivation, you can more clearly see what steps you need to take to revive your goals. But by looking at what worked well, you’ll recognize the progress you made.
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2 | Revisit your priorities.
If you didn’t do this before you laid out your goals, make a list of your priorities.
What truly matters to you right now? Where do you want your focus to be aimed?
Don’t worry about what you think your priorities should be.
If you try to direct your focus on an area just because you think you should, your heart won’t be in it. It’s a better use of your time and energy to be honest about what you really want.
Once you have your priority list, look at your goals and make sure they align with your priorities.
If one of your priorities is financial stability, then a goal to travel more might not make sense.
However, a goal to save money for a specific trip or future travel is still in line with that priority.
Intention matters much more than your level of discipline when it comes to reaching goals.
If you have an important reason/priority behind your goal, you’re much more likely to be committed and willing to make changes in order to succeed.
A health coach I know tells a story about one of her clients, an older man who wanted to lose weight and lower his cholesterol. The man hired this coach to help him but wasn’t following any of her recommendations.
Finally, she asked him why he cared about improving his health. The man told her that he wanted to make sure he would be around to walk his daughter down the aisle. Bingo! That’s his real “why”.
Once the coach was able to help her client focus on the driving force behind his decision to get healthy, he was able to use that “why” to remind him to exercise and eat better.
Your priorities define the “why” behind your goals. If you focus on that reason, you’ll have an easier time pushing yourself to take the steps you need to when you don’t feel like it.
3 | Refine your action plan.
Be specific about the action plan for accomplishing your goals.
If you were too vague when you initially mapped out a plan for reaching a specific goal, refine the steps you need to take to succeed.
“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”
Pablo Picasso
Let’s say your goal is to save $20k for a down payment on a house. An action step like “spend less” isn’t going to get you very far.
How will you spend less? How will you know that the amount you spend is helping or hurting your goal?
Start with the end goal in mind and reverse engineer the steps you need to take.
Using the example above, if you want to save $20k in a year for your down payment, that means you need to save $1667 per month.
Based on your income, you can put aside $1000 per month and still pay all of your bills. That means you need to figure out ways to cut $667 from your current expenses to reach your monthly goal.
The first step is to track your spending so you know where your money goes each month. Let’s say that in tracking your spending, you realize that you spend $200 on food each week because you often eat out at restaurants or get takeout.
Now you’re going to create other action steps like these examples:
- Bring your lunch to work 4 days per week.
- Cook dinner at home 5 nights a week.
These action steps are specific enough to guide your decisions. You know that to make a dent in your expenses, you need to spend less on takeout. Bringing lunch to work instead of ordering a sandwich is a practical step to reach your bigger action plan of saving $1667 per month.
It’s also important to allow wiggle room so you’re not miserable. If you’ve been eating takeout 4 times a week, saying you’ll never eat out is pretty drastic. Cutting back moves you toward your goal while still letting you enjoy life.
Once you’ve broken your goals into specific action steps, you need to make room for those actions in your schedule.
4 | Add specific action items to your weekly/daily calendar.
Once you have your action plan nailed down, add specific action items to your calendar.
Using the example above, one of the action items might be planning your meals for the week and grocery shopping on Sunday.
By putting clear-cut tasks into your calendar, you’re setting yourself up for success. Instead of a casual idea about cooking dinner at home, you eliminate the mental energy that it takes to follow through.
Checking off those action items on your schedule or to-do list gives you a sense of accomplishment and motivates you to keep moving forward toward your goal.
Remember to recognize your small achievements. Progress doesn’t have to be monumental to matter.
Use these strategies to revive your goals so that you can really celebrate when you finally reach the finish line!
This post originally appeared on Medium.