Top 10 Tried and True Ways to Set Goals You Can Keep This Year

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Check out these tried and true strategies for the top 10 most popular New Year’s resolutions and how to set goals you can keep this year.

Set Goals You Can Keep This Year - 1 - Wisconsin Homemaker

Do you make resolutions each year but find that you fail at achieving them? You are not alone.

Check out these tried and true strategies for the top 10 most popular New Year’s resolutions and how you can reach your milestones, quickly and easily.

Achieve These Popular New Year Resolutions with 10 Super Strategies

Like most people, if you are like me, you start the New Year out with good intentions to keep your goals and resolutions, but then you fail because the goals are too far reaching or too broad.

Research has found that on average resolutions don’t necessarily work most of the time. The reason? It’s because you do not address the issues that sabotage your goals.

This year, however, you give voice to what is keeping you away from obtaining your personal goals year after year. This way, you will likely see more success and be able to keep your long and short-term goals resolutely.

Resolution Tip: Don’t get discouraged if you have to make adjustments to your resolution. The important thing is when you make any positive changes to your health, attitude, family life or personal life, you will feel better, love better, are happier and healthier. And, that is something to celebrate!

So, here’s a list of the top of New Year’s resolutions and the 10 strategies that will help strengthen your resolve to keep them:

1. Eat Healthy

This is probably the most popular of all personal goals and resolutions. It is also probably the one area that you have the most control over.

The problem is that more often than not, many people consider food like it was an enemy. So let’s rethink this problem.

We know that being alive necessitates eating daily, so how can eating be so bad? It isn’t a bad thing.

Food is our source of energy and keeps our bodies working at its potential. So instead of “withholding” food or using the “d” (diet) word, this year set your goal for making wiser choices of what you are eating and less of what you shouldn’t eat.

Sounds simple? It is.

Most of the time, people spend an exorbitant amount of money on diets, trying to keep up with their health-conscious neighbors, but the real issue comes down to motivation and making key changes in how you deal with food in the first place.

You cannot compete or achieve any form of healthy eating habits or gasp! lose weight, if you don’t begin to make lifestyle choices that will point you in the right direction toward eating better.

HOW ABOUT:

Start out adding a serving or two of fruit and vegetables per day. Increase this until you reach the daily required amount required for your individual needs.

Your family will also benefit by healthy snacking. It’s like having an hors d’oeuvre buffet every day.

Or, let your kids create fruit kabobs and, yes, include a mini marshmallow or two to cap them off. Or try pinwheel wraps. You will find that eating these necessary foodstuffs are not only delicious but fun to make.

Try These Healthy Options:

Vegetarian and Vegan Ideas – Need inspiration to go meatless? These vegetarian-inspired recipes will inspire you to create meals and side dishes that are not only delicious but also healthy for you, too.
Smoothie Recipes – Fruity Ricotta Smoothie and Strawberry Watermelon Smoothie – These healthy fruit smoothies recipes are perfect for your morning breakfast or as a healthy snack option and requires few ingredients plus can be made in five minutes or less.
Homemade Granola Recipe – Homemade Granola is so easy to make. This recipe shows you how to make nearly endless variations depending on your favorite ingredients and your desired sweetness.

2. Exercise Daily

It’s fun to watch the reality shows seeing the coaches and trainers cajoling their mentees onward and upward while they help them set reasonable and obtainable goals.

It works for two reasons: first, because there is someone who supports these individuals wholeheartedly; and, second, these individuals have agreed to deal with their own personal development goals.

Even so, not everyone is lucky to be able to afford or even want a personal trainer.

But truth be told, motivation starts from within not without. Still, you cannot hope to motivate your mind until you get your feet (and body) moving through healthful and safe exercise.

So what about you?

Who is in your corner rooting for you when you need a cheer, a pat on the back, a kick in the you-know-where when you need to get going?

You might be surprised but your best cheering section should be you!

So get on the right track this year. But first, you’ll need to remind yourself that:

Exercise isn’t just about moving more, although it helps greatly to start out slowly and work up to your goals in graduated baby steps.
Exercise isn’t just about lifting and building those big muscles so that they can help burn fat more effectively.
Exercise isn’t just about cardio and getting our heart rate up to a level that will cause our metabolism to release fat.
Exercise isn’t just about short term and long term effects of our good work.
Exercise is a way of life. Much like a child gets up and romps down the stairs to eat breakfast, then hops out to the bus stop. Climbing, running, jumping, pumping, laughing and having fun, kids do it best. Perhaps that is why those kids who are active and have built up strong muscle mass really seem to have it together? They aren’t sluggish, just ask their parents. They don’t have time for TV or video games, although they do avail themselves of it if the weather becomes inclement. But for the most part, these kids move, move, move to the beat of living life to the fullest.

And, isn’t that a better way to look at exercise: a way of living, laughing and having fun?

3. Lose Weight

Right before the beginning of any New Year, viewers are bombarded with wonderful slogans and challenges for setting goals for weight loss through television ads.

There is a reason to this madness and it isn’t just for dragging you into a program and grabbing your money. The truth is we all need to lose weight whether physically or symbolically.

So what is dragging you down?

Is it the pounds you keep close to yourself or is it material goods that seem to sap your strength and pocketbook. If you are holding onto something so tightly as these, then maybe it is time to loosen the hold and step back and ask yourself why you cannot let go.

Weight Watchers, Noom, as well as a host of so many great weight loss programs prescribe ways to count calories, reduce the fat and exercise more.

Since we will have already addressed these areas with eating well and exercising more, why not focus on what it truly means to lose weight.

For many, the act to lose weight means that you will be more active, more flexible, able to walk and run longer, twist and turn without pain, travel and live longer.

To lose weight, then, isn’t just counting calories but counting the benefits that you will receive as a result of losing the extra pounds or ties to things that hold you back from obtaining your goals.

Resolution Tip: Accentuate the positive by making you the priority each and every day.

4. Work Less

Work less and you will be happy–wouldn’t that be lovely? Maybe for some but not for all. Work for some is a way to try out new things, a way to express themselves and challenge the status quo. For others, work is drudgery and a way to keep one’s head above water. What does work mean for you?

While you cannot change the importance of bringing in an income, you can, however, make your time at work less of a drudge and more productive.

If you are faced with work overload or stress, work will seem like an interminable sentence.

Resolution Tip: Try to set goals to communicate more, be more positive, listen more, criticize less and be a team-players–and, soon you will be setting your sights on achieving some positive results with your goal setting.

5. Rest More

If you have been following the headlines on the health channel and websites, there definite benefits to sleeping more. The obvious ones are that you will be healthier, more wide awake, less prone to falling asleep when driving and even “less crabby.”

But even if you do go to bed early each and every night, you still may not be wide awake, bright and chipper the next morning!

The reason? Stress and worries.

And, for many insomniacs, caffeine, varying schedules, too much computer time and not enough “play” time can add to this problem, too.

Health issues are also a concern and for this, you may need to speak to your doctor to see if he/she recommends prescribing a sleep study for you.

If your lack of sleep is a non-medical issue try to find ways to reduce your stress. Some things like money worries (and who doesn’t worry today about where the next paycheck is going to come from) can be assuaged by writing down the issue or concern on a pad by your bed and putting a positive thought beside it.

And, when you journal be sure to list possible solutions. Doing this on a regular basis you will find that your stress will lessen and that you will allow yourself to experience some much needed rest.

For example say: “I am worried about money.” Positive thought: “Tomorrow I will try at least one way to save or be more frugal with my wages.”

RELATED RESOURCE: 1,001 Ways to Relax: An Illustrated Guide to Reducing Stress (affiliate link)

6. Spend More Time with Your Loved One

Sometimes life gets in the way and you find yourself shortchanging yourself and your loved one by having to deal with other “obligations.” You can take back this time by setting a goal to spend more time with your special someone.

The fact is you shouldn’t wait for an anniversary to remind you how much you rely upon their love and how important a role they play in our life.

We all know that life can change in a minute and we can’t get back loss moments.

Resolution Tip: Make time this year to send some love notes, write a poem to your love, hug and kiss more–not just in passing and above all, tell them you love them at least once a day!

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7. Spend More Time with Your Family

Parents would say that they spend an exorbitant amount of time with their children. In truth, it isn’t important for you to eke out more time out of your day as much as it is to set goals to spend more quality time with them.

Spending more quality time with your children might mean that you have to tear your kids periodically away from their electronic devices and challenge them to do more family-centered activities like eating together at dinner, participating in family game night, watch a family-favorite movie–etc.

When you make time for these types of activities, you are showing your children that they are loved to pieces.

You might also want to make time for kid-friendly “dates.” Let your kids once in a while tell you where they want to go for their birthday dinner or outing, and if they shrug, offer a couple of choices.

You can also do this when you go on family trips and other activities.

You need to remember that your children are wonderful treasures and that time has a way of making them grow up so very quickly. So this year, make this one of your goals.

Resolution Tip: Make it a life-long resolution to cherish your children and relish the precious time you have with them.

8. Read More

This is one resolution or goal that many people make but have difficulty finding time to pursue.

Why read more? Don’t you and your loved ones read enough as you peruse the internet or other online articles?

The reality, that isn’t the reading that get so often overlooked. It is books and short stories and even poetry–writing that takes us away from our ho hum daily lives and offers us adventures, humor, tragedy, and hope.

Books can take you where other writing can’t and for this reason you need to make this as one of your goals and just let go of reality sometimes.

And, with so many options for books and formats for which to read them: hard covered, paperback and ebook that you really can’t say you don’t have time.

Resolution Tip: So make it a year of learning, loving and living vicarious through great characters and superb storylines.

9. Live Green – Reduce, Reuse and Recyle

We should all be setting our goals to live green this year, not only to help the planet but also because it a responsibility that everyone, as stewards of this wonderful blue planet, needs to do.

Set some basic goals like recycle cans and paper (per your local city or town requirement). Then move on to helping in trash drives and cleaning in and around your neighborhood.

This year be a “friendly green fiend” and join one of the many highway cleaning groups that do a spring and/or fall clean up each year.

Or, maybe work with your local park system and assist them in a general park clean up day. All of these activities will go far to making our world “greener.”

But what else can you do?

Your kids have been taught to turn off lights in a room that they are no longer in and to turn off the water of the sink when they brush their teeth.

You too can follow suit by replacing your incandscent bulbs with energy-efficient LED ones. Close the drapes to conserve heat in your home or apartment. Walk more (see section: Exercise More) and you can learn to “eat green” by growing your own fruit and vegetables.

10. Be Happy

You wish to be happy so why aren’t you striving for this goal this year?

Being happy and wanting to be happy is natural and shouldn’t be cast aside as being mundane.

You should always strive to be happy wherever you live, whatever occupation you have, and whatever stage of life you are at.

Happiness isn’t just a state of mind, it is also a way of life, a way of living peacefully with oneself and with one’s neighbors.

So how do you be happy?

One key to happiness is to understand that happiness can be found anywhere, anytime and any place. You just have to be open and honest and try to live your life to the fullest.

J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Hobbit and the trilogy, The Return of the King) said it best:

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

The bottom line is this: if you wish to have a happy New Year, try to focus on accentuating the positive and looking at yourself in light of your potential: the potential love, laughter, peace and good health you will experience now and throughout the years to come. But you have to resolve to do so and stick with it. Happy New Year!