New Year, New Goals! Tricks to Maintain Resolutions and Foster Healthy Habits

Setting personal goals can be a healthy and motivating way to start the year, and the road to attaining them often starts strong these first few weeks. Knowing how to make them sustainable in the long run, or seeing them through to their conclusion, requires a bit more management. Sometimes success means maintaining discipline – sticking to diets, workouts, learning journeys, etc –  but it can also be about the size and scope of the goal itself. Let's break it down and see if we can find ways to make those resolutions stick.

Divide big goals up into small bits, with shorter timelines or lower thresholds, and celebrate each one as its own successfully reached mini-goal. Those wins will keep you motivated, and starting small minimizes the daunting challenge of digging in. Just 5 pushups per day? Easy peasy. Do that for a week, and if you feel ready, up it to 10 the following week. Organizing just one messy drawer? No prob! Keep it up the following days and weeks, and your entire house will be tidy before you know it.

Creating good habits is always a goal, but it can be frustratingly elusive. Here's a small hack to get you started building a life full of healthy routines: pair your desired habit with a daily task you already do naturally. You brush your teeth every day; why not follow that with some stretching or muscle building? Doing the dishes, or doing your morning hair and makeup, can be paired with audio learning tools like new language podcasts. This might feel odd at first, but after a while you won't need to think about it, it'll become as natural as the habit you've attached it to, and you'll find yourself increasing your reps, duration, or learning level as time goes on. Here's the magic of it all: once something becomes a habit, you no longer need discipline to make it happen.

Successful follow-through on life goals can be as much about forming habits as it is about creating systems, and systems often mean finding helpful tools to support your efforts. If maintaining a tidy space is on your list, incorporate organizing bins, both large and small, in your drawers and closets. Gaining control of the fam's menu planning can be achieved with  a simple dry-erase board for your kitchen, front and center for everyone to see and discuss. Choose solutions that work for everyone in the family, and you'll not only see things start to fall into place, you'll also notice a palpable calm come over the household.

Infusing your goal path with rewards and tiny pleasures is a great way to maintain motivation. Hit that first exercise goal, or reach that first level in your learning journey? Treat yourself to something that brings you joy, and you'll find yourself eager to get to your next reward. Getting your space ship-shape? Choose organizing products that add beauty and playfulness themselves; anything that brings a smile, like a pop of color or a refined material that enhances your decor, will help motivate and welcome consistency. Allow yourself a free pass every once in a while, too! Don't worry if you skip a day, leave a mess, or not quite reach that level in the time you'd hoped, no one is keeping score but you. Being kind to yourself is key to conquering daunting tasks.

Staying on track with your resolutions isn't magic. If you set yourself up with achievable goals, form habits slowly, support them with good tools and systems that work with your life instead of against it, habits stop feeling like chores and start to feel normal, and goals stop feeling like out-of-reach pipe dreams and start to feel attainable. Here’s to a strong, calm, healthy, and organized start to the year!