New Year – New You? Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

With every new year comes new opportunities. Some call it a fresh start, others a chance to put the past behind us, or the perfect time to start something new. It is also commonly the starting point for many good intentions, eg: quit smoking, stop drinking, start working out, stop being lazy, cook everything from scratch, be a better husband/wife/girlfriend/person, etc.

However good our intentions may be – statistics show that many new years resolution cruise through January only to come to a crashing halt in February. The problem, it seems, is that many start to extreme. If you have been smoking 30 a day for 5 years going cold turkey can prove a bit difficult.

Here are our tips to making your goals achievable, to make your good intentions come to life. 

1. Time
   On your way to your big hairy goal, make sure to give yourself time to get there. Put in several part-goals and be realistic about where you are at the start. Want to run a marathon? Assess your fitness and start form there. Your first goal could be to do a 10k run. This way the end won’t seem so far away and you can pat yourself on the back for reaching the first stepping stone to the top.
2. Detail
   Be specific about what you want to achieve. Vague goals such as ‘increase revenue’ or ‘lose weight’ can leave you feeling unmotivated, simply because there is no measure. There is no point you’ll reach where you can say ‘I’ve reached my goal. Make your goals realistic and measurable. You want to increase revenue – by how much? By when? Write it down, and break it down.
3. Method
   Find out exactly what you need to do in order to reach your goal. If it is to improve revenue, some steps could e.g. be ‘review marketing spend’, looking into your stock levels, your best sellers and so on. Figure out what strategies and actions will take you closer to your goal.
4. Spread the word
   Share your intentions. If you let the people around you know what you’re up to it may motivate you, and it will most definitely be harder to let it go. If you run a shop, sit all your staff down so you are all on the same page about what you want to achieve and how you are going to do it.
5. Keep going.
   It will probably not be plain sailing all the way there. And you ay find you hit a wall from time to time, or that you fail to reach a steping stone within the time you gave yourself. That’s fine. Humans make mistakes – winners don’t give up. In the end it matters less when you reach your goal than whether you reach it at all.

Happy New Year all!