Get your New Year’s Goals to stick!

The New Year is the perfect time to set some new goals and reflect and think about where you want to go and what you want to achieve.

Unfortunately, quite often New Year’s goals get forgotten about or abandoned when the chaos of life takes over.

To avoid this from happening, here are some things that you can do to get your New Year’s goals to stick!

Choose your goals wisely

Achieving your goals requires work and effort to be able to be successful in achieving them. When deciding what your New Years Goals will be, only choose goals you actually care about and are important to you.

External pressure and forces can often cloud what’s important to you and what you want to achieve. You might make goals based around things that aren’t that important to you but make them goals because society makes you think that that’s something you should be doing or working towards. Remember that there is a difference between doing something because you are interest in it and doing something because you think you should be interested in it.

With each goal, ask yourself

• Is this important to me?

• Is this something I am willing to put effort towards achieving?

• Is this something I am passionate about?

• Are external forces making me think I should be working towards this when it’s not actually something I’m interested in right now?

Create SMART goals

How you create your goals is important if you want to be successful in achieving them. The SMART acronym is a way to help and guide you when creating your goals and focuses on the different aspects you should be keeping in mind when creating goals.

Creating SMART goals is a great way to ensure you are on the right track when creating your New Year’s Goals!

So, what are SMART goals? SMART stands for

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Relevant

• Time

Specific

• Your goal should be specific with a clear outline of what it is.

Measurable

• Your goal needs to be measurable so that you can track your progress and know when you have competed it. How will you know when it has been accomplished?

Achievable

• Your goal should be realistic and something that can be possible to achieve with your current restraints.

Relevant

• Your goal should be relevant and important to you. Ask yourself, is this something that’s important to me to achieve? Is this the right time to work on this goal?

Time

• Your goal should have a deadline or target date that you want to have it completed by.

Examples of SMART goals:

• I want to have $10,000 saved into a secondary savings account by 31 December 2022 which will go towards a house deposit.

• I want to be able to play one full length Christmas song on the guitar by 24 December 2022 which I will play for my family on Christmas Day.

• I want to run 5km in under 30 minutes on the running track in my neighbourhood by 31 December 2022.

You can learn more about SMART goals in one of our other Toolkits here!

Create a Plan

Creating a plan is a great way to prepare to tackle your goals and set you up for success. Spending some time creating a plan will help you in the long run when trying to achieve your goals!

Breakdown your goals

Breaking down your goals into smaller and manageable steps is one of the best ways I’ve found to help me achieve my goals.

Start by listing out all the steps that need to be taken before you’re able to reach your goal. If your goal is to buy a house, some of the steps required would be to save up X amount for a deposit, get pre-approval from the bank, meet with a mortgage broker, create a budget, etc.

Breaking down your goals into steps gives you a road map to achieving your goal and motivates you to keep ticking off the steps. And if you struggle with feeling overwhelmed by big goals, your goal won’t look so daunting when it’s broken down into small chunks.

Work with a timeline

Once you’ve broken down your goal into steps, create a timeline. Plan when you want to achieve each step so that you can reach your goal by the deadline that you set. You could break this down into weeks, fortnights, or months. Or by semesters, seasons, or any other measure of time.

If you’re breaking it down by month, list out what steps you want to work on each month and which months steps to be compete in. For example, is one step needs to be completed by the end of June, you can list down in May that you want to work on that step, which gives you two full months to complete it. The time frame that you give yourself for each step should be dependent on what the step is and how long you think it will take to complete.

Its okay to change your mind!

Remember that throughout the year things will change and you will learn and grow. If a plan or goal is no longer working or relevant to you, it’s okay to change or adapt it, or just scrap it altogether. This is about you and your own personal journey, so don’t be afraid to change things as you go and as needed to suit you and your life. What’s important to you and your future should remain at the forefront of your goal setting.

Find support

Let’s face it, reaching your goals can be hard and stressful, and remaining motivating throughout the whole year can sometimes be difficult. This is why its so important to find support when trying to achieve goals!

Have a friend or family member that has the same goal as you? Team up and support each other! Having a goal buddy can help motivate you to keep going and hold you accountable for your goals. Plus, its often more fun when you have a friend there with you!

Don’t know anyone with a similar goal? Your friends and family can still help support you. Explain your goal to friends and family and ask for their help in achieving it, even if it’s just offering up words of encouragement, everything helps!

Best of luck for your New Year! You’re going to own it!

Emma