Happy New Year! January 1st. A brand-new calendar. A fresh opportunity to hit reset. Over half of Americans make New Year’s resolutions. But most are abandoned by February. Setting goals for what you care about goes a long way toward living the life you really want. So how can we do this better?
Read on to find three surprisingly easy and often overlooked actions you can take today to set yourself up to reach your goals in 2025!
1. Think about what’s working…and what’s not
Do you notice you’re making the same resolutions every year? It’s time to be honest with yourself about what’s working, and what’s not.
Maybe you want to connect more socially with friends, but you’re an introvert who has to get up early for work. Joining the gang every Thursday evening at the local bar for trivia night isn’t something you’re likely to keep up. The noise and the crowd will make you dread it and your Fridays will be exhausting. What if you proposed going out to lunch or to a movie on a Saturday instead?
Maybe you’ve always wanting to help those in need in your community, but it’s hard to find large blocks of time to volunteer. Make a point instead to connect with or show kindness to someone you don’t know every day – in the grocery checkout line, at the bus stop or even as you drive on your commute. You never know what people are going through. A simple connection with you might be just the thing they need to get through their day. That’s a different kind of service to your community that’s every bit as important as volunteering with an organization.
Get creative about doing what works for you. Let go of what’s doesn’t.
2. Set intentions, not resolutions
Maybe it’s just semantics, but the word “resolutions” feels unforgiving – like if you don’t hit the mark perfectly, you’ve failed. Because they’re specific and outcome-focused, resolutions sound good, but they can actually limit your growth.
Say you decide to go to the gym every weekday before work. You do well for a short while, but then life happens, and you miss a day or two or don’t get the exact outcome you’d hoped for. You get frustrated, quit and return to your old habits.
Try settings intentions instead, and then take steps to move in the direction of those intentions. Steady progress in the right direction over time is good enough without hitting absolute targets.
So instead of saying you’ll work out at the gym every morning at 6am, have the intention of making healthier choices. To make that happen, commit to incorporating more movement in your life. That might include taking a yoga or kickboxing class at the gym on some days, but it also might mean taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking for 10 minutes three times a day around your office building or down your street, or doing squats or pushups or a plank during every commercial break when you’re watching a show. Or you might commit to eating more fruits and vegetables, fewer processed foods, or consuming less alcohol.
Giving yourself flexibility to make small but attainable choices every day will go much further toward reaching your health or other goals than a drastic resolution that’s abandoned within a month. Setting intentions allows you to get to your goal in many different ways, depending on what works for your life on a given day or week.
Pro tip: It’s not enough just to think about what you want. While that’s a good start, a recent study out of California confirms that writing down your goals makes you 42% more likely to achieve them. Tell supportive people in your life about them and you’ll increase your chances of reaching them even more. Writing them down and sharing your goals with the right people makes them more real and will keep you accountable.
3. Make room for the new
Some years ago, I wanted to sing in our church’s contemporary music group. The band was fantastic, and the lead singer welcomed me to join, but I could never get to the Tuesday night practices. I kept trying to make it work, but something always came up.
A couple of years into this frustration, I finally announced to my active family with three school-age kids that Tuesday nights were mine for singing. I could help with any activity or commitment, as long as it didn’t conflict with music practice. And though it wasn’t always easy, somehow we made it work. But until I guarded the time on my calendar, it just didn’t happen.
Don’t be misled by the fresh, clean look of your new 2025 calendar. Your responsibilities and obligations are still there. If you don’t purposefully set aside blocks of time on your calendar, daily life will quickly fill your schedule with all the things that need to happen, and you’ll have no time left for the things you really want to happen. So be protective of your time; no one’s going to do it for you!
For 2025, we wish you meaningful connections with others, and a life filled with intention and belief in yourself and your ability to make a difference in this world!
