It’s hard to believe that the New Year is already upon us. Many people take stock of the past and look to the future. Perhaps there is something big or small you’d like to change and that is great. However, some people want to make major changes or do/not do something 100%. While this may be lofty goal, we want to set you up for success, not failure. The best way to do that is to strive for small changes.

Set your goal

The first step is to define what it is you’d like to accomplish. Second is to determine how you will measure your goal, thus it needs to be very specific. Third if it’s a larger goal, how will you break it up into smaller steps? Finally what is your time line for this goal?

Break your goal down into steps

For instance, let’s say you’d like to save $1000 a month for 1 year. First you need to determine if this is a realistic goal. Maybe you have been piddling your money away on things you don’t really want or need. Then perhaps you want to break it down to $250 a week. Or maybe you want to do a little more so you can have some extra spending at holiday time. You determine what will work or what won’t. Perhaps there are months where your spending needs to be greater for some reason or another, so you want to save more in the other months.

Make a plan

How are you going to do this? Do you have your credit card bills so you can see where the excess is going? Are these things you can do without?

Do you need some help with your plan? Maybe you know someone who is good with finances. Perhaps this is something you and your partner are doing together. You can brain storm on ways to save.

Measure your progress

This is key to your success. If you don’t know where you are with your finances, how can you know if you are on track? Maybe you use Excel or some app to help you keep track. It feels good to know you are doing what you set out to do.

Have an accountability partner

If you are doing this with a partner already then it makes things easy. If not, share your goal with a family member or friend. By doing so you are more likely to stick with it. When you share your goals, people will ask how you are doing.

Set one goal at a time

If you try to do too much all at once you will lose steam. Stick with your one goal and do it to the best of your ability. You are more likely to be successful with this strategy.

How to handle challenges

It is helpful if you have some idea of what will get in your way. That way you can be forewarned and forearmed. What will you do when you are hit with a challenging situation? Realistically you will have months where you have unexpected costs in your budget. Was your goal flexible enough to handle these? If not, do you need to reevaluate your goal? With our example of money, perhaps $750 per month is more realistic. You won’t know until you try it out.

Flexibility

As mentioned above, you will most likely have challenges with your goal. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be a goal. You’d already be doing it. Maybe you need to try for a few months and see how it goes. It could be harder than you thought and you need to reassess. There is nothing wrong with reframing your goals to be more realistic. Refrain from telling yourself that you are a failure if you are unable to achieve your goal. Remember, by setting this goal, you have already done more than you did last year.

What did you learn?

If you weren’t able to achieve your goal, what went wrong? Was it set too high? Were there unexpected challenges? What did you learn from your attempt? We all learn from our mistakes. How might you reframe them for next time around?

Goals are not easy to accomplish, by definition. If you did succeed congratulations on a job well done!

If this is something you want to work on, therapy can help. Together we can come up with a game plan for your goals and how to achieve them. Give me a call at 713-304-6554.

Take care,

Debbie