New Year Setting Goals Routine

Because the new year has GOT to be the year we achieve our goals right?

As we almost reach the end of another year, it typically means that it is time to start thinking of new year’s resolutions.

We’ve heard this all before:

• Set the new year’s resolution
• Get excited about starting it on January 1
• Give up second day (or week)

I talked about in a blog post last year how there are a few obstacles to achieving our new year’s resolutions. Those obstacles included how our resolutions can be vague, and we’re focusing on the wrong aspects.

That’s why, this blog post is going to outline a New Year Setting Goals Routine. These include steps to making New Year goals and actually set yourself up for success rather than failure.

1 – Do a Solo Thing (even if it’s just for an hour)

What solo thing you can do? Anything, as long as you’re by yourself!

For me, I really like going on solo hikes or solo drives in my car. I like to walk by nature trails or go to cafes…. Anywhere where I get to spend time with myself and really get to know myself more.

Why is this even a step in a New Year Setting Goals Routine? Well, you want to make sure that you really take the time to figure out what you truly want for the new year, without the input of other people.

It will also give you a chance to listen to yourself. Because the truth is, in order to truly listen to yourself, you need to be alone. You can’t ‘have other people’s inputs nearby.

That’s why, when it comes to setting goals for 2022, and truly discovering what YOU want, you need to do this alone. You need your own space to figure it out.

2 – Set a Day for Goal Setting (even if it’s just a couple of hours)

Here’s a mistake that I always used to make every year…. make my new years resolution completely last minute.

The mistake with doing that is that it lacks these three things:

• Intention (the WHY behind why you want to achieve that resolution)
• Specification (what specifically you want to achieve)
• System (the steps you need to take to achieve your goal)

Making goals will take time. While I did say a day, you don’t really need to set aside a whole day just for setting your goals. BUT you can set aside an hour or two to write down your goals, and go deeper into how you are going to achieve them.

And with the steps that we are going to go through in this blog post, you definitely need to set aside at least an hour or two! You don’t want to be making goals impulsively and at the last minute. You want to be intentional with the goals that you set for yourself, and most importantly, make sure that you’re setting yourself up for success rather than failure!

3 – List Your Life Domains

Now as we proceed with our actual goal setting routine, it’s important to reflect on how things are currently in your life.

The reason for this is because we want to make sure that in the process of pursuing new goals, we don’t neglect the other areas of our life. The important areas of your life include:

• Physical – your bodily health.
• Emotional – aka your mental health.
• Spiritual – your connection with your beliefs (religion, culture)
• Intellectual – how you grow your knowledge
• Social – all your relationships such as your family, friendships, co-workers, significant other.
• Vocational – your job
• Avocational – your hobbies and other activities.
• Financial – your personal or family finances

It’s so important to not neglect any of these life domains in the process of working on your other goals. Because think about it, if your physical health is affected, then it also affects not only the other domains of your life, but when achieving your goals anyway.

That’s why this is one of the first steps in this goal-setting routine. Yes you want to set some new goals, but you want to make sure you have goals to improve each of these life domains as well.

So take the time to list these domains down and really reflect what you want to improve in these areas and how you can do it. Do this before you start thinking about other big goals you want to accomplish. In fact, having goals for any of these domains could also help you with your other big goals as well!

4 – List your Limiting Beliefs

This is something that is usually overlooked in the goal-setting process.

You see, one of the reasons why most new year’s resolutions aren’t accomplished is because of the limiting beliefs that hold a person back.

For instance, one person may have set a goal to exercise every single day. However, their limiting belief that holds them back is that “they’ve never been a fit kind of person to do that”. The narrative they tell to themselves is ultimately what leads them to not following through on the goal.

The same with a person setting a goal to have success in their business. Their limiting belief is that “they’ve never had success or not worth of it”. That of course, leads them to not following through on that “new years’ resolution”.

We want to go through our limiting beliefs that holds us back so that we are self-aware of them. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to be self-aware of our limiting beliefs. Being self-aware of our limiting beliefs will help us change them.

Once you have become self-aware of your limiting beliefs, you then want to upgrade those beliefs to more beneficial ones. You want to change those negative limiting beliefs to more helpful beliefs. We want to change that belief to something that actually pushes us forward rather than pull us backwards.

For example, you can turn your “I’ve never been a fit kind of person to do that” belief into “I love finding new ways to get fit”. Or you can turn “I’ve never had that kind of success and I’m not worthy of it” into “I am more than capable to achieve the success I want, and I am worthy of it”.

5 – Make Your Goals

Here’s the big part – the goals aka the new year’s resolutions.

You’re probably familiar with making new year’s resolutions before. But how may times have you actually stuck with them? You want to make goals that will help you stick to it as much as possible. Here’s how:

Make your goal SPECIFIC

We’ve all heard of resolutions (or even set them) such as:

• To be happier
• To enjoy life more
• To become a better person

But what exactly do they mean?

The problem with just setting these goals is that they could mean a lot of things. For example, the resolution to be happier can mean different things for other people. For one person it could be to spend more time with family and friends, and to another could be to watch a lot of funny TV shows.

You have to consider what each of them mean to you. So instead of saying you want to “become a better person”, think about what will help you become a better person. Reading more personal development books? Volunteering more? Sharing more? If you say reading more, then your resolution will actually be read 1 personal development book a month.

Put a number on it

What do I mean by this? Putting a number on it means either:

• Adding in how many times you will be doing it a day/week/month
• Deciding if this is a one-off or a ongoing habit.

Remember how I said you want to change that goal from “become a better person” to “read 1 personal development book a month”? There was a number on it. That number was how many times you’ll be doing it a month.

To get more specific with your goal, it’s also important to add in how many times or how regular you will do it. You’ll have to also think about whether this is something one-off or it’s an ongoing habit.

6 – Identify WHY You want to achieve them

This is a very important one – behind all the goals you are making, you need to have a BIG reason why you want to accomplish it.

Because honestly, sticking with goals or new habits is not the easiest thing in the world! For you to want to keep going with those changes you’re making, the why needs to be motivating.

It’s the powerful why that would get you through the days when you don’t feel like doing anything. It’s the why that will stop you from giving up on your resolutions and get you back into your poor choices.

So if you had set a New Year’s resolution to read 1 personal development book a month, why exactly do you want to do that? Well, a person who had set that goal may say that they want to grow their mindset to become a better person for the people that they love. That’s their why.

So during the days when they don’t feel like reading, they’ll remember the reason why they wanted to start reading in the first place. It’s because they want to become a better person for the people they love.

7 – Create Systems to Achieving Them

Now finally we go through the actual steps to achieving your goals! We’ll go through mini-sub steps.

WHO before the WHAT

Before jumping straight into the actions required to achieve your goal, you want to first think about WHO you needed to become to achieve them.

The WHO is the identity that needs to be established.

For example, learning how to play an instrument is the new year’s resolution, but becoming a musician is the identity.

Once you identify that identity, you start acting like that person. You start acting like a musician. Would a musician practice every day or only once in a while? Would a musician strive to learn new songs every week, or whenever they feel like it?

You see, building that identity will help you become that person you need to be to achieve your goals.

Create systems

Our systems allow us to have a better idea on the processes needed to accomplish them.

The mistake most make when making a new year’s resolution is setting a goal BUT not the plan. You have to actually plan how you’re going to achieve it.

Just like if you had the new year’s resolution to be better at music, your system will be:

• Learning different instruments.
• Practicing daily.
• Learn a new song every month.

Or if you had a new year’s resolution to be more creative, your system will be:

• Do a new creative activity every week.
• Painting every week.

The system is what you will be focusing more on rather than the goal. Instead of focusing on just the goal, you want to focus on the system instead. It’s the system that will bring you the results.

Tackle the New Year!!

To summarise everything we just talked about, you can probably tell that setting new year goals (aka new year’s resolutions) actually takes a bit of time! If you want to set yourself up for success, you actually need to take the time to really reflect on what you want, and go deeper into what you need to do.

It’s a nice thought to think that this could be the year where you actually follow through on your New Year’s resolutions. Maybe we haven’t done that before, but with a new approach there is a chance this time.

After all, we shouldn’t really expect a different result if we keep doing the same thing over and over again right?

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Related Articles:

New Year, New (New Year’s Resolution) Systems

New Year, New WHY!

How to Create Systems for Your Goals (and focus on them!)

Something to Think About First Before Starting a New Habit

How to Put Yourself First and Be the Main Character of Your Life

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