If you came across this post, you probably want to plan your goals for 2023 and achieve all your objectives. Planning and counselling are the keys to having a successful year.
Perhaps now, you are thinking of turning the page and starting a new one. But do not forget that even though 2022 has been a very challenging year and of great adaptation in all aspects and segments, new opportunities have opened and will continue to open.
2023 is approaching, and many people are looking back on a particular 2022. Coming up with New Year’s resolutions is a must-have task despite the ups and downs. Today, we offer you the perfect opportunity to start making your dreams come true—changes that you propose for next year, next month, or next week.
Half of the New Year’s resolutions we write are on paper, in a forgotten notepad or even in thought. This time that will not be your case since we will tell you what you should include in your list of goals. The best tips to achieve them and what you should avoid so that you become part of the group of those who successfully reach their New Year’s goals this year.
Therefore, to enter with the right foot and tread firmly, you must plan carefully.
Introduction: 2022 In Review – What Went Well?
Answer these questions in writing: What went well this year? Here, you must include all the projects, goals, and promises you fulfilled. What did I learn from everything that went well? With this question, you must understand what teaching so good that happened to you left you, that new relationship, that course, that job.
What did the past year leave me? Have I had enough time to think about myself and my surroundings? Have I learned any new ones? By answering these and other self-questions, you will find answers not to put aside these experiences lived for 2023.
That is why it is necessary to briefly retrospectively last year. Think for 5 minutes about everything that happened in 2022. What lessons have you got from all that?
Write them down on a piece of paper and consider them when defining your goals for 2023. Maybe some of the goals you set for yourself in 2022 and did not reach can be regarded as 2023?
Another advantage of looking back at the past year is that it can replicate what has worked and avoided what did not go as planned. Thus, you will have more opportunities to achieve your dreams.
What Didn’t Go So Well?
Not keeping New Year’s resolutions is sometimes due to laziness, lack of time, motivation, not knowing how to achieve them, indecision or the fact that they are no longer a priority for you, among other widespread situations.
What didn’t go so well? Here you must put all the projects, goals and promises that you did not fulfil or that did not go as expected, and what learning did it leave you? With this question, you should analyse what that situation left you and see how you could improve it, especially what you discovered. It is essential that when answering, you are sincere with yourself and do so thinking about different spheres of your life: family, work, relationships, personal growth, productivity, finances, spirituality, education, health or well-being, etc.
What Happened to Your Goals This Year?
In January, gyms fill up with new subscribers, and most of them do not return in February. This dropout is because meeting our goals is not attainable if we only focus on the goal.
Imagine that your closet is in a tremendous mess; badly hung clothes, empty hooks everywhere because you take them off the hook and do not remove the pin, and the drawers are a mess. You never find what you are looking for, and you have piles of clothes made into balls on the shelves.
Your goal is to fix your closet, and you do it. It takes a couple of days, but everything is in its place.
Hanging blouses and pants, no empty hooks are taking up space, and the drawers and shelves are in place; in one the t-shirts, in another your underwear, and so on.
You achieved your goal. But in a few weeks, clutter returns, and your closet is once again a zone of chaos.
Now, you wait for another moment of motivation to fix it again. Achieving the goal only changes our life for a moment because we only focus on the symptom and not the cause.
We must change the results, but the results are not the problem. We must change the system that leads us to have those results.
If instead of thinking, “I already made it”, you make fundamental changes, that is, every time you take the blouse down, you take out the hook where it was, every time you take out a shirt, you do it taking care not to unfold the others. Every time you try on something that you end up not wearing, you hang or fold it again, and every time you put on your clean clothes, you take a few minutes to put them in place carefully; you change the system, AND the result.
When we only solve the problem at the resulting level, we temporarily solve it.
We must do it at the system level and not just at the results level to achieve changes.
Lessons Learned and Key Takeaways
The problem with goals. We think that once we achieve the goal, we will be happy.
We focus only on the result. When we only think about the goal, we postpone our happiness until we achieve it, and we see happiness as something that we can have in the future.
If I do not reach it, I am not happy. Without realising that the path matters more than the goal itself, reaching the goal is useless unless we have made a habit of the journey to achieve it.
To achieve that these goals are already part of our daily life and that we do not feel frustrated until we achieve them, we must fall in love with the process and thus turn that goal into a habit.
When you fall in love not with the result but with the process, you make fundamental changes.
How Would You Like To Set & Achieve Your Goals This Year?
Habit mentality Among the new year’s goals, we always touch on an issue related to our health.
This year I am going to exercise, I am going to stop eating junk, I am going to lose weight, I am going to beat the metabolic syndrome, I am going to give up sugar, and so on.
We start January with that new gym subscription, buy kilos and kilos of vegetables, or remove all the junk food from our pantry.
The problem is that we do not like the exercise we do in the gym, the steamed vegetables tire us in less than a week, and since we are on a restrictive diet, we live with a constant craving for junk food.
We do that exercise that we do not like until we reach the goal, and then we do not go back to the gym, even though we have paid all year in advance to “motivate” ourselves.
We eat steamed vegetables for several weeks until we can’t anymore, and we never want to see anything green on our plate again.
We dream of junk food because we do not know how to nourish our bodies.
But what if instead of going to the gym, because it’s the exercise that burns the most fat (but you don’t like it), you go to a spinning class with that funny teacher who plays the music you love? Or What if you start dancing for 30 minutes every day with the videos of that super happy teacher on YouTube? Or if you buy a book with recipes on how to cook vegetables in different ways instead of eating your steamed vegetables, and you get to experiment in your kitchen with delicious recipes that nourish your body?
Well, it happens that you fall in love with the process! Nobody makes a habit of doing things they don’t like, and nobody reaches a goal and keeps it if they don’t fall in love with the process.
When we force a change with things we don’t like, we quickly revert to our unwanted habits.
Conclusion
I propose that you sit down, notebook in hand at the end of the year, not with your phone or computer but with a notebook.
Writing by hand about the path we want to follow changes our minds so that we cannot achieve it in any other way.
Write your goals by categories which can include health, family, relationships, work, saving money, spirituality, etc. And in addition to the goal, write at least two ways to achieve them in a way that you like.
Anyone can achieve a goal, but not everyone; that goal becomes a habit. If the goal is “I’m going to give up the soda”, write what you will do to achieve it.
To change an unwanted habit, you should not fight against it. You do not want to take out the soda and change it for water if you do not like to drink water alone.
It would help if you found a kind way for yourself, something like I will prepare a thermos with pure water every day that I will always have near me. I will also have water in the refrigerator with pieces of cucumber, strawberry, mint, or whatever you love, and I’m going to have a couple of glasses a day, enjoying the flavour and the freshness. If I crave soda, I will buy one to drink, sit down and enjoy it on Fridays.
See how you will change the system on a path of love and respect for yourself, and not only focus on the goal you want to achieve.
Find the ideal path for that goal to become a new habit through an approach you love and not one you hate. Fall in love with the process to achieve, reaching the goal and making that goal a new habit that is part of your life.
