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How To Keep New Years Resolutions: 5 Goal Setting Tips

“What am I doing? Where am I going?

There’s got to be more to life than this!….”

New Years resolutions spring up from our attempts to answer such tricky questions.

I won’t pretend to know the answers, but I can share 5 goal setting tips on how to keep New Years resolutions. After all, the quickest New Years resolutions to be broken are usually quickly formed, poorly thought out goals.

Goal Setting Tip 1 - Once a year is enough, thanks!

It’s healthy to ask big questions about where your life is going, but ask them too often and you’ll end up in a bog of directionless despair. Take the pressure off, and only ask the big questions once, or at most, twice a year.

Goal Setting Tip 2 - 7 is the magic number

George Miller, a 1950’s psychologist, proposed that we can only deal with 7 bits of information at any one time. Any more information and we need to group things into more memorable, manageable chunks. So when you create your New Year master plan, keep goals down to a manageable number and group similar areas.

Goal Setting Tip 3 - I say tomayto, you say tomaato - let’s call the whole thing off!

A common mistake when setting goals, is in-sufficient detail. This can cause problems when we need to articulate these goals to work mates, life partners or even to ourselves. As an example of why this is important when goal setting, think of a house.

I have a particular house in mind, which is probably entirely different to the house you’re picturing. Is your house made of brick or wood? How many rooms does your house have?

Is your house full of people or are you the sole resident? Imagine the arguments if we had the joint goal of buying a house together!

Keep New Years resolutions by writing your goals in enough detail for everyone to understand and agree what’s meant. So if your goal is to buy a house, put some flesh on the bones by saying your goal is to buy a 3 bedroom house, with garden, near work, for no more than 3 times your salary.

Goal Setting Tip 4 - Keep it real!

You are more likely to achieve realistic goals. That’s not to say you can’t shoot for the stars and pursue your dreams; break up your mega goal into smaller, more manageable mini goals, and you’re more likely to achieve your dream.

Goal Setting Tip 5 - Fantastic fibbing

Here’s an unusual game to play. Start a conversation with a friend, family member or hijack someone from the street. Tell them they are going to help get your life on track, and all they have to do is ask a few choice questions.

Start to tell them the story of, for example, your New Years resolution to find and start your dream job. Tell them what it’s like in the studio or office, the people you work with and meet as part of your job, what your daily schedule looks like. Get them to ask you questions about how you got there e.g. how did you get the interview, who spotted your business card, etc.

This is where you will be put on the spot and have to come up with plausible answers. Aim to “keep it real” with your answers, e.g. don’t rely on winning the lottery to fund your plans! Keep this conversation going as long as possible, with as much detail as you can muster.

This might sound like complete madness, telling fantastic fibs or untruths about how you achieved you New Years resolution. The truth is that the questions they ask will forge links in your mind, creating a map that make it easier for you to achieve your long term goal. Just make sure you write down the steps you took to achieve your goal!

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

I hope these 5 goal setting tips show you how to keep New Years resolutions and achieve your goals. Follow this link for a more detailed goal setting guide, including examples and templates to ensure you achieve your goals.

By Lyndsay Swinton

Bobby was getting cold sitting out in his back yard in the snow. Bobby didn’t wear boots; he didn’t like them and anyway he didn’t own any. The thin sneakers he wore had a few holes in them and they did a poor job of keeping out the cold.

Bobby had been in his backyard for about an hour already. And, try as he might, he could not come up with an idea for his mother’s Christmas gift. He shook his head as he thought, “This is useless, even if I do come up with an idea, I don’t have any money to spend.”

Ever since his father had passed away three years ago, the family of five had struggled. It wasn’t because his mother didn’t care, or try, there just never seemed to be enough. She worked nights at the hospital, but the small wage that she was earning could only be stretched so far.

What the family lacked in money and material things, they more than made up for in love and family unity. Bobby had two older and one younger sister, who ran the household in their mother’s absence.

All three of his sisters had already made beautiful gifts for their mother. Somehow it just wasn’t fair. Here it was Christmas Eve already, and he had nothing.

Wiping a tear from his eye, Bobby kicked the snow and started to walkdown to the street where the shops and stores were. It wasn’t easy being six without a father, especially when he needed a man to talk to.

Bobby walked from shop to shop, looking into each decorated window. Everything seemed so beautiful and so out of reach. It was starting to get dark and Bobby reluctantly turned to walk home when suddenly his eyes caught the glimmer of the setting sun’s rays reflecting off of something along the curb. He reached down and discovered a shiny dime.

Never before has anyone felt so wealthy as Bobby felt at that moment. As he held his new found treasure, a warmth spread throughout his entire body and he walked into the first store he saw. His excitement quickly turned cold when salesperson after salesperson told him that he could not buy anything with only a dime.

He saw a flower shop and went inside to wait in line. When the shop owner asked if he could help him, Bobby presented the dime and asked if he could buy one flower for his mother’s Christmas gift. The shop owner looked at Bobby and his ten cent offering. Then he put his hand on Bobby’s shoulder and said to him, “You just wait here and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

As Bobby waited, he looked at the beautiful flowers and even though he was a boy, he could see why mothers and girls liked flowers. The sound of the door closing as the last customer left, jolted Bobby back to reality. All alone in the shop, Bobby began to feel alone and afraid.

Suddenly the shop owner came out and moved to the counter. There, before Bobby’s eyes, lay twelve long stem, red roses, with leaves of green and tiny white flowers all tied together with a big silver bow. Bobby’s heart sank as the owner picked them up and placed them gently into a long white box.

“That will be ten cents young man.” the shop owner said reaching out his hand for the dime. Slowly, Bobby moved his hand to give the man his dime. Could this be true? No one else would give him a thing for his dime! Sensing the boy’s reluctance, the shop owner added, “I just happened to have some roses on sale for ten cents a dozen. Would you like them?”

This time Bobby did not hesitate, and when the man placed the long box into his hands, he knew it was true. Walking out the door that the owner was holding for Bobby, he heard the shopkeeper say, “Merry Christmas, son.”

As he returned inside, the shopkeeper’s wife walked out. “Who were you talking to back there and where are the roses you were fixing?” Staring out the window, and blinking the tears from his own eyes, he replied, “A strange thing happened to me this morning. While I was setting up things to open the shop, I thought I heard a voice telling me to set aside a dozen of my best roses for a special gift. I wasn’t sure at the time whether I had lost my mind or what, but I set them aside anyway. Then just a few minutes ago, a little boy came into the shop and wanted to buy a flower for his mother with one small dime.

When I looked at him, I saw myself, many years ago. I too was a poor boy with nothing to buy my mother a Christmas gift. A bearded man, whom I never knew, stopped me on the street and told me that he wanted to give me ten dollars. When I saw that little boy tonight, I knew who that voice was, and I put together a dozen of my very best roses.”

The shop owner and his wife hugged each other tightly, and as they stepped out into the bitter cold air, they somehow didn’t feel cold at all.

Isn’t it nice, we still have loving and caring people around. This heart touching story is from http://graceland.gentle.org/xmascel/boyrose.html