One third of people who make New Year's resolutions won't make it to the end of January according to time management firm FranklinCovey, the data was collected from a poll of 15,000 customers about their New Year's resolutions. The most popular resolutions are to save more money, get out of debt and to exercise more. Spending more time with family and becoming organised are also near the top of the list. 

In order to reach a goal, whatever it may be, it's important to figure out why you want to achieve that said goal; this is the most important factor in all of this, whether you like it or not there will be times when you don't want to take the steps necessary to reach the goal and it's that why that will push you to get there, not just the goal itself. Take for example someone you know deciding to take one of their goals and make it yours, no matter how good the reward of reaching the goal, if you don't have a clear personal reason of why you're doing it, it's extremely unlikely to happen.

In order to truly find out why you'd want to commit to a goal you're attracted to, simply keep asking why. Example:

I want to learn to play guitar - Why? I want to play my favourite songs on guitar - Why? They sound pretty fun to play but difficult - Why would you want to do it if it's difficult? I want to prove to myself that I can stick to something even if it's hard.

So you can see from the above example that oftentimes it's not as simple as why you originally thought of committing to the goal. Asking yourself these questions can really help to give you the driving motivation to get to your new goal, whatever it might be. Now you know why you want to reach the goal, you need a strategy and one of the best ways to figure that out is using the SMART acronym shown below:

Figuring out these aspects of your goal will create a blueprint for you to actually implement daily habits and eventually reach your goal. If someone wanted to lose weight (a common New Year's resolution) they could make a plan using it by making it specific (lose body-fat), measurable (lose 5kg), assignable (you will be doing it!), realistic (is 5kg body-fat loss realistic? Yes!), time-related (3 months should be suitable). So just by following that acronym you can make it much more clear exactly what you want, how to measure your success, who's responsible for reaching the goal, whether it's realistic and the amount of time you want to do it in. 

From there you just need to figure out which habits you can implement daily in order to reach your goal by the point the chosen time-window is up. If it's something you've never done before, researching it online can help a lot. A great tip to keep you on track is to create smaller goals that lead up to the bigger one, using the fat loss scenario, losing 0.5kg per week would put you on track to reach your goal in the chosen time period. It's this feedback of getting closer to your long term goal that will keep you on track and reassure you that it really is doable.

Now that you have the know-how, it's up to you to start working towards the goal you've chosen, it may seem hard at first but once you start reaching those smaller goals, ingrain the habits into your daily life and eventually reach your long term goal you'll only wish you had started sooner!

If either you or someone you know live at our Quinton scheme (William Lench Court) and are interested in getting fitter, you can book a free gym session with me (Raffi - Gym and Wellbeing Advisor) at our on-site gym! To do so, simply write your name in a free slot in the gym session timetable on the counter outside Jayne's office, then just turn up to the gym at that time and day.