Setting Goals and Accomplishing Them
2019 was a crazy year for me on all kinds of fronts, but one thing I am proud of was the ability to accomplish my three New Year’s resolutions. I have been setting resolutions for more than 15 years and I have never, I repeat never accomplished all that I had set out to. In light of my recent success (insert winking face here), I figured I would write out some tips on how I did it and how you can to! (For reference my three resolutions were: Seek God daily, Read 24 books, Run a Marathon).
5 Steps to Make your New Year’s Resolutions a Reality
Get serious. The first thing I did was set my mind to three things I wanted desperately to accomplish. They were within reach, but were going to take some serious effort.
Break down the calendar. Taking it “one day at a time” is easier said than done. I told myself in years previous that I would do that and by the end of January I had given up. So this year I decided to break down the calendar year into 4 quarters. Within these 4 quarters I had mini-goals to reach. From there I broke down the quarter into days. I printed a calendar and wrote what I needed to accomplish each day to achieve my goals. It truly became a day by day journey.
Get specific. Continuing point 2, I would be very specific on how I was going to make these goals happen. For instance, I had given myself two weeks a month to read a book. I broke down the books (I had a list of 24 books already picked out) and wrote out how many chapters a day I needed to read in order to complete the book in a two week time frame. Sometimes the books were so good that I would finish in three days. In that case I would start on the next, which allowed me to get ahead of my goal and gave me flex time. For the marathon I downloaded a training program that had a specific amount of miles to be run assigned to each day. Everything was written, per day, on the quarterly calendar.
Be accountable. This step my not work for everyone, but I think it was the most important thing for me. On a personal note: I hate letting people down. Because of this, an easy way to keep my goals was to tell EVERYONE about them. Especially the marathon. People were so supportive, and time to time they would ask me how it was going. The idea of giving up halfway through the year was not even in the cards because too many people knew what I was trying to do, and I would've been too embarrassed to just give up. (Not to mention there were haters who doubted my ability and I needed to prove them wrong. A little friendly competition really gets my engines running.) It was also a great way to keep my goals from January on my mind in October.
Get after it. Looking back I really didn't have that many steps to accomplishing my goals. The bottom line was that every day my goals were on my mind in some way or another. Whether it be written down and next to my bathroom mirror, or on the lips of someone holding me accountable. I’ll always approach my goals this way from here on out. Now it’s your turn! Grab 2020 by the horns, write some goals and let it be the year you accomplish them!
Here is a list of what I’m looking to accomplish in 2020:
Read 30 Books
Attend 4 Local Theatre Productions
Practice Spanish using Dulingo once a day (break my record of consecutive days)
Complete 12 original paintings