22 Ways to Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions

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Why are our commitments to ourselves so hard to honor? Too often we bend over backward to meet work, friend and family promises but ignore our own basic needs, and end up constantly running on empty. The end of the year brings a bitter-sweet moment of reflection on the lives we lived for the past twelve months. Did we meet any of the resolutions we set? Have we changed so much that those resolutions are now irrelevant?

The annual deep introspection triggers planning to do things better in the new year. But while it may be clear changes need to be made, it can be very difficult to discern what goals we need to set. There is also that niggling feeling that we won't follow through based on our judgment of how well previous resolutions have faired. The anxieties that come with planning to make positive changes in our life can be overwhelming and negative self-talk can impact and diminish the visions we have for ourselves and our ability to follow through in our plans.

Regardless of age, fitness levels, or wealth, everyone deserves to create a plan to honor their inner spirit and desire to do more of what you love, to serve others and to do more good in this world. Read on to discover the numerous ways you can create and stick to your new year’s resolutions.

1. Set Meaningful Goals

This is probably the most simple yet important aspect on meeting your resolutions. Setting meaningful goals is about creating plans and targets you look forward to working on, that fire you up, that bring you joy and pull you out of bed in the morning and which truly motivate you at a deeper level. Set goals that feel right, that reflect the ideal life you want to have so you can be inspired each day to make progress. It’s ok to get the goals wrong as long as you take a moment to review why they don’t quite work. Discover how to set the right goals for you in Episode 4 of TRANSCENDENCE. 

2. Keep It Simple

Don’t spend too long on the detail or you may never get started, set a simple, meaningful goal and then spend your energy working towards it.

3. Deeply Understand The Why

It is one thing to set a goal to get fit and another thing to get fit with purpose. Knowing the deeper drivers of your goals and setting them at the forefront of your mind (or writing them up somewhere visible) pins the tasks you need to undertake to a base of self-care and love. For example rather than just wanting to get fit, you may want to get fit so you can feel strong, so you can feel confident, so you can have more energy, so your body is able to experience more from life... Write out the whys and try to get to the core of the goal, this will help you to fully understand how important your goals are and the great places they will lead you.

4. Break Your Big Goals Down Into Smaller Goals

Your big goals might seem overwhelming when you look at the whole journey to reach them, but if you break it down into a series of small, easily achievable steps you’ll find yourself ticking off your to-do list much quicker and getting closer to your end goal. Tony Robbins calls this process ‘chunking’ and it’s a profoundly simple and impactful strategy. For instance if you want to start a new business a stepping stone to that would be registering the name and doing up a full business plan. Then you can progress with the other steps. Make sense? 

5. Create a Vision Board

When you see your goals every day you are reminded to stay on track. Write your goals down, make them beautiful to look at and put them in places you look at frequently. To learn how to create a vision board, take a look here.

6. Pay Attention to Your Inner Voice

One of the main reasons we burn-out and stray from our important goals is because we are unable to take the advice of our inner-voice that calls for us to slow down, heal, or reevaluate our course. Going full speed in the admin of life can distract us from our real needs as we run toward arbitrary targets. Your intuition is always there, most of the time we are aware of it after something goes wrong and we remember thinking “ah, I knew this wasn’t quite right.” Listen to this voice, it wants to see you succeed.

7. Meditate

It can sometimes be difficult to tune into ourselves and get a sense of our wellbeing from day to day. Meditation is one of the best ways to clear the way for uninterrupted, honest thoughts and allows you to realign yourself with your resolutions. Meditating once a day will not only give you more energy to fuel progress in your plans but will also help clear distractions out of your way. However the year is going, meditation and yoga are important tools for healing and refocusing.

8. Write Yourself Words of Encouragement

It can be easy to talk ourselves out of doing the things we know we need to do. In preparation for the “can’t be bothered” moments, write yourself a note of encouragement that you can read or quickly bring to mind to keep you on track. These notes should incorporate the “why” or purpose of your tasks and how they fit into the bigger picture of your goals and life.

9. Address Your Limiting Beliefs

Take a moment to consider all the reasons why you might tell yourself you can’t do something and then convince yourself of the opposite. You are capable of more than you think, you just need to believe it. We have a ‘ hitting limiting beliefs workshop' on FMTV within the TRANSCENDENCE masterclass which can help you with this.

10. Have An Accountability Buddy

Share your goals with a friend, colleague or family member and ask them to help you stick to your goal work through the steps to achieve it. You could help them do the same with their own goals and succeed together.

11. Celebrate The Wins

When you complete big or small steps towards your goal, make sure you celebrate and reward yourself. Half the fun and most of the lessons we learn are on the journey towards something, so make sure you celebrate and enjoy the ride!

12. Schedule Reflection Times

Just as you set your goals, set your reflection time to see how far you’ve come, what you’ve achieved and what you might like to redirect. Do this a few times throughout the year.

13. Set Aside Relaxation Time

When you try to do too much and put too much pressure on yourself you’ll get overwhelmed, sleep deprived and burnt out so make sure you give yourself some time to rest and relax, you’ll find you’ll actually achieve more when you get back into it!

14. Find a Community

Find a group of people who are working towards their own goals and can support you to do the same, in this group is where you might find your accountability buddy mentioned above! The FMTV Group is full of wonderful people who will inspire and support you on your journey.

15. Learn New Things

Look for ways to can expand your mind and thinking to learn new skills and gain new insight. The more you learn the more you can do and this will all help you achieve more towards your goals.

16. Seek Out Role Models

Look for people who have achieved similar goals to what you hope to achieve and try to understand what they did to work through the tough times and what tools, techniques and advise they can share.

17. Support Others Chasing Their Dreams

If you see others working hard towards their goals and you have the opportunity to support them, you should! If there’s a new local business opening up, drop in and give them a try. If there’s a friend learning a new skill or service, be a tester for them. The more you help others, the more inspired you’ll be and the more people you’ll meet - in turn, this can help you get re-energized for your own goals.

18. Be Grateful

Whether it’s opportunities, people, events, sales, whatever it is that comes to your way practice gratitude for the things you have and for the lessons you’re learning.

19. Share Your Results

Don’t just keep your wins to yourself, tell others so that they can celebrate with you… and you never know, you might inspire someone else to set and reach their own goals.

20. Weekly Check-In

Ask yourself, “what can I do this week to move closer to my goal” - these can be the small goals or the larger overarching goal. Doing something small every week will help you get there, and setting weekly check-ins will help you make better decisions that serve the life you desire.

21. Laugh And Let Your Ego Go

You might make mistakes and find yourself in brand new situations that make you feel a little uncomfortable but having a laugh and removing the ego will help you enjoy the experience.

22. Be Easy on Yourself

If things don’t go to plan, that’s OK. Life isn’t perfect but we can all just try to make the best of what happens, stay positive and try to keep moving forward. You can have down days and that’s OK, just remember to be kind to yourself.

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