New Year’s Resolutions: Setting Realistic Goals to Improve Your Lifest

Everyone is enthusiastic about planning and setting New Year’s resolutions by the end of every year. Still, very few can hardly achieve their goals by the end of the following year. Some people cannot even make it to the end of January and give up on their long-awaited resolutions by spending the rest of the year as a failure.

So, what’s the most important thing they miss and fail to achieve their goals. This blog will enable you to learn some valuable tips and tricks to set realistic goals for the New Year that you will also achieve.

What to Consider Before Setting Any Goal?

First off, realize the importance of the goal-setting process and keeping track of it religiously. It would help if you understood that goal-setting is not a one-time job. Therefore, determine your goals and the time it will take to achieve them.

The second thing to consider before you plan to set goals is to figure out what is essential for you and what distractions you should avoid. Goals can be short-term or long-term, and it depends on the type of goal you are choosing for your upcoming new year’s resolution.

Some goals can be achieved within days, weeks, or months. However, some take six to eight months, a year or more. So, remember that not every goal will be easy to achieve, and not all plans will take an equal amount of time and effort.

So, to create and achieve realistic objectives by the end of the following year, you must begin working on them today.

Types of Goals You Can Focus on as a New Year’s Resolutions

Here, I have categorized the personal goals you can set to build an enriched lifestyle.

Pay Attention to Your Mental Health

Mental health issues are growing in this age of advanced technology, and it is a big dilemma for today’s generation. Most often, people neglect to focus on their mental health. Taking care of what you feed your brain also affects your overall lifestyle.

By changing the activities that affect your brain, you can cope with daily routine anxiety and stress. I have enlisted some goals for you to get some inspiration:

Develop A Reading Habit: Start reading a page or two of a book per day. You can also read online blogs, articles, news editorials, or even ebooks on Kindle that you can carry everywhere you go. Choose the reading niche that best fits your taste and needs. Personal development niche is a great kick-starter to build a reading habit.
Learn Some Handy Skills: Learn something new that interests you to spend your leisure time, such as creative writing, knitting, stitching, cooking, baking, public speaking, vintage artwork, interior designing, etc. These skills engage your creative brain in the process, helping you in mental and psychological growth, and are easy to achieve within a year.
Keep A Journal: Develop a habit of writing a gratitude journal or a reflection journal. Write about daily writing prompt questions or topics. This activity helped me a lot for years to keep track of my actions and make myself accountable for everything I do in my everyday life.
Learn A New Language: Learn a new language for an hour daily. For instance, if you plan to travel to a country or place next year, learn their local language. It will be an excellent opportunity for you to know the culture, tradition, values, norms, and ethics of that place.
Create a Routine: Creating a morning and nighttime routine is also the best resolution that starts and ends your day perfectly. It helps you organize your schedule and meet the deadlines of your daily routine. According to research, getting up early in the morning has profound effects on a person’s mental health, so do going to bed early.
Stay Organized: One thing that I always aspire to do is stay organized in almost everything I do. If you spend more time at home, what you can do is set a few minutes to organize and declutter your personal space, kitchen, cupboard, or bedroom. Also, make a cleaning routine weekly or biweekly according to your ease.

Stop Ignoring Your Physical Health

Ignoring your physical health may lead you to severe illnesses and chronic diseases like heart attacks, diabetes, blood pressure, cancer, and arthritis in some problematic situations. If you are determined to improve your entire lifestyle by the end of the following year, you have to change your entire routine.

Let me make it easier for you to have better physical health next year.

Focus on Your Eating Habits: Consider what you eat daily. Suppose you are taking junk foods or have unhealthy eating habits. In that case, you need to cut out everything that is a potential danger to your body. Shift to eating a balanced diet, including more vegetables and fruits. Drink plenty of water daily and avoid energy drinks. Keep track of your calorie intake. Set a goal to limit caffeine intake in your daily routine.
Exercise Regularly: Build a strict workout routine if you are not regular currently. Avoid extreme cardio workouts or marathons to lose weight or become thinner. Make sure you take 20-30 minutes of exercise daily, 4-5 times a week. Regular physical activities like walking, jogging, running, yoga, meditation, aerobics, swimming, or any other sports you like to play are a great source to keep your heart and body healthier.
No Compromise on Sleep: Taking proper sleep of 7-8 hours a day or quick daytime naps also helps you be productive throughout the day. The blue light of your mobile and laptop makes your eyes uneasy and tires your brain too. So, if you use digital gadgets in bed, you are more likely to be unrest for hours even though you want to sleep. Avoid screen time at least 1-2 hours before bed to have a sound sleep.
Visit New Places: Traveling new places, going to new restaurants, playing sports that you loved in your teenage, planning a family picnic, going for a hike, wood pecking, or sunbathing at a beach are the best options to choose for occasional physical health goals every week or once in two weeks. Visit galleries, theaters, art museums, playgrounds, and landmarks in your city that inspire you.

Make Your Spiritual Health Better

Your spiritual health brings your physical, psychological, and social components into harmony. A meaningful presence, wholeness, and actualization of many aspects and talents of human beings are all examples of spiritual health.

And most of us are pretty weaker in maintaining our spiritual health these days. We spend purposeless and meaningless lives that lead us nowhere; but depression, stress, and anxiety.

The extraordinary spiritual resolutions you can consider for New Year are as follows.

Spend Time In Nature: Set a goal to spend at least 1-2 hours alone or with your family or friends every week in nature. Feel your connection with nature; observe the natural patterns of wind, sunrise, sunset, rain, sunlight, snowfall, birds, animals, trees, mountains, changing weather, and everything you can connect with. Getting closer to nature will unravel so many hidden realities to you about the universe’s higher power, the creator of everything.
Read Spiritual Book: Reading your religious manuscripts every day connects you with your higher power. Spend quiet and alone time to find out the answers to the questions of your existence and the purpose of your life. Praying and participating in-group prayers in your organized community will also help you grow spiritually.
Meditate Daily: Set a goal to meditate every day once or twice for 15-30 minutes. For that, light a scented candle, make your space cozy, and set a suitable temperature and light. Meditation with repeated affirmations helps relieve your mental and physical tensions and elevates your spiritual levels. Visualize your goals and dreams during meditation to have better results.
Practice Yoga: Yoga may help with spiritual well-being and intuitive awareness in various ways. Yoga increases your spiritual well-being by lowering mental and physical stress. It has also improved spiritual health, a more optimistic attitude toward life, inner satisfaction, and reduced existential anxiety.
Be Positive: Bringing positivity through positive activities, people, and content makes your entire being positive. Cutting off toxic and negative people from your life also helps you improve your spiritual and mental health. Stay away from toxicity and avoid negativity to benefit your overall lifestyle in the upcoming year.
Be Kind: Make a habit of practicing gratitude, forgiveness, and kindness. Participate in charity and donations to occasionally look after the needy in your community. Showing empathy and compassion to others also helps you improve your spiritual health.

Prioritize Social Life over Social Media

Besides other resolutions, planning to limit your digital world exposure and spending time in your real-time social life is also essential. Social media and the digital world are making us distant from each other.

Unfortunately, no one spares much time for their loved ones except posting a lovely snap or a cute story on Instagram to show how much they mean to each other. But in real life, no one barely talks to each other.

Setting limitations on your social media usage will help you have more family time. You will enjoy and experience real social life instead of a virtual one.

Mealtimes: Fix proper mealtimes every day and enjoy your meal with your family or friends. It is a great way to build solid and healthy relationships. Discuss your day with each other, laugh together, and have fun. Manage your time for every activity you do with friends, family, or your children that keeps you connected with them.
Movie Night: You can also plan a weekly movie night for your family or friends to have a one-on-one connection to enjoy the beautiful moments together away from your digital devices.
Weekends: Similarly, you can plan a bonfire, a feast, and pick a book for the reading night as a family. Develop a culture of reading within your family and kids. Also, you can choose indoor games to play on Saturday nights or any outdoor sport, like beach volleyball with friends.
Plan A Date: Plan to go on a date with your spouse every two weeks or a month, whichever suits best to you both. It will help you have a strong bond and some personal time to spend with each other. Discuss your problems, share your happiness, or plan your future together on such dates.
Stay Away From Gadgets: Plan to stay away from digital devices at least a day every week to have some “me time” and make your self-care routine a priority. Do whatever you like the most in your personal ‘me time.’ Take a warm bath, cleanse your skin, moisturize your hair, go for a manicure, take care of your hygiene, go shopping, buy some trendy clothes, listen to music or audiobook, or cook some healthy meal to treat yourself.

Keep Track of Your Finances

Keeping track of your finances throughout the year will help you stay organized and manage all your expenses with no difficulty. Suppose you have difficulty managing your finances, savings, paying taxes, or mortgage every year. In that case, it’s the best time to keep track of everything since the beginning of the year.

Travel Budget: If you want to buy something, you can fix a new budget for that cause every month. For instance, if you’re going to travel by the end of the year or even after six months, you can save a certain fixed amount every month to reach that traveling goal.
Pay off Debts: If you have difficulty paying off your debts, planning ahead of time is an excellent opportunity to avail yourself. Plan your budget in a way that leads you to pay off your debt as quickly as possible.
Reserve Fund: Create an emergency or a reserve fund for every month that you can use in times of need. It could be anything unplanned that may come up during the year.
Car or House: Are you planning to buy a car or a house next year? Start saving and get it without going into debt. It’s better to wait and keep away from the debt.
Budget Your Month: Creating a monthly budget for your expenses, including groceries, bills, and gas costs, will help you keep track of your spending.
Improve Your Income: Start an online side hustle according to your passion and skills to increase your income and restore your finances.

Recommendations on Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions

Having countless resolutions for the New Year is exciting. But how would you achieve any of them if you don’t know how to execute your plans?

Make a precise list of all the goals you want to achieve. Writing all your ideas in a journal or a planner will be a great option to organize your plans concerning the days, weeks, and months. Mention the time for each target and how long you want to continue to achieve that resolution.
Know that changes in your plans may occur during the process. So, instead of giving up on your objectives, try to adjust your goals and make amendments where necessary. Constantly evaluate your progress. Eliminate irrelevant activities to stick with your goals.
Set daily reminders on your mobile phone’s Google calendar or To-do List for every task. If you do not want to see the pop-ups on your phone all day, write them down on sticky notes and place them somewhere you can see them every day. Daily reminders will help you achieve success in your goals.
Set only goals that you think are meaningful and attainable. Don’t stress yourself by setting too many expectations that you cannot achieve later.
Instead of focusing on the results, focus on the daily process and small steps to lead you to the outcomes.
If you think that long-term goals are challenging to achieve, break them down into short-term goals and set daily or weekly milestones instead of panicking about months and years.
Let others take part in your goals or make them keep a check on you. Being answerable to someone is the best method to push yourself to achieve a particular milestone.

Are You Ready To Set Realistic Goals For The New Year?

So now that you have grasped a lot about setting realistic goals, it is time to make yourself ready to take the initiative of setting and achieving your goals.

The goal-setting process makes you motivated by many things you want to accomplish in your life. Even before the start of the year, you feel the excitement of doing so much that you plan and organize your life ahead.

Putting yourself under too much strain won’t help you at all. Remember, things cannot be achieved in a single day. Be patient and consistent throughout the process to have better results.

Don’t panic or lose hope if you cannot achieve all of your goals by the end of next year. Because it’s life and it cannot be perfect no matter what you do. Live in the moment, enjoy every breath you take, and gradually pursue your dreams.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t wait for the new year, and start writing about what you want to achieve today.

New Year’s Resolutions: Setting Realistic Goals to Improve Your Lifestyle