5 Tips for New Year Goal Setting

With 2022 just a few days away, many of us are thinking of New Year’s resolutions and the goals we want to accomplish for ourselves in the next 365 days. To help us figure out what goals to set and how, we’ve created a list of 5 tips to help with goal setting in the new year. Check it out!

5. Get the low hanging fruit first. We all know that New Year’s resolutions are hard to keep. In fact, nearly 80% of people report failing to achieve their New Year’s resolution. And yet, most of us, 74% to be exact, set resolutions in the new year. It’s time to make those dreams and goals a reality. Our first tip is to get some quick wins under your belt by setting achievable goals that you can easily accomplish. Whether that means setting goals that can be achieved in a short time frame, like going to the gym 5 days this week, or setting a small goal like drinking 1 glass of water when you wake up in the morning, the point is to set small and achievable goals. When you accomplish that first goal, you’ll feel invigorated and ready to tackle more challenging longer-term goals.

4. Set two week sprint goals. Deciding to eat vegan for a whole year might sound like an amazing goal to set (and it is!) but forcing yourself to try to go an entire year doing something is stacking the odds against you. Try setting two week “sprint” goals instead. If you challenge yourself to eat vegan for two weeks, that is much more achievable and gives you somewhere to start — and end! Quite literally. If you can see the finish line of a difficult goal, you’re more likely to push yourself to hit it. Setting two week goals also allows you ample time to assess what you liked and what you didn’t about a certain goal so you can shift and change the goal to fit what your needs.

3. Get back on the saddle. Offer yourself grace. Here’s the secret, no one but you actually cares if you accomplished your New Year’s resolution. If your goal was to run 3-5x a week and one week you only ran 2x, that’s okay! Don’t throw out your entire resolution just because you didn’t hit the number once. Get back on the saddle and try again! Afterall, the point of achieving a New Year’s resolution shouldn’t be about being rigid in achieving the goal you originally set without any mistakes; instead, it should be about bettering yourself and improving. So, give yourself the flexibility and grace to change your goals as needed.

2. Reward yourself. It’s hard to change a habit. And, for many of us, our New Year’s goals center around changing some long-enshrined personality trait we have that we don’t, uh, love. So changing that is going to be difficult! Give yourself some treats or rewards to look forward to once you hit your stretch goal. For example, perhaps your goal is to stop buying take out coffee in the mornings. Challenge yourself to see if you can hit this for 2 weeks. If you do hit that, set a specific reward you’ll earn. Maybe that’s an activity like getting a massage, or something more simple like sleeping in while your partner watches the kids. It doesn’t matter what your reward is, it matters that you're specific and clear about what you’ll get when you hit a certain milestone.

1. Share your goals. Last but not least, share your goals with your friends and family! We know that sharing your goals with the right people increases your chance for success. So tap your circle of friends and family and start sharing what your goals are and why you want to accomplish them. Doing this will do a few things: 1) make the goals real for you, 2) let your network know what you’re doing and invite help as needed, and finally 3) hold you accountable to your goals. Often, we need that social pressure of knowing others know what our goals are in order to help hold ourselves accountable to achieving it. Share your goals with friends and family however you feel most comfortable; whether that’s on social media or through individual texts. Then start going after your goals!

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