Starting the New Year with Goals: Achieving Success through Realistic Planning

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always entered the new year with plans. It’s to be expected from someone who’s been making to-do lists since primary school :) Although I’ve never made a vision board, I’ve created digital versions of it. For those who don’t know what a vision board is, it’s a collage of images from magazines and newspapers representing everything you wish for, and you hang it somewhere visible. Essentially, by visualising what you want, you attract it to yourself (the famous Secret theory). Whether visualisation, the Secret, or vision boards work is debatable. But what I do know is that if you write down your desires clearly and plan according to that list throughout the year, you’ll largely achieve them. Although it sounds simple, the reality is much different. About 90% of people (I’m totally making up this statistic!) can’t achieve their goals.

How did I have such a successful year?

For the past 5–6 years, I’ve been achieving most of my goals. But this year, something clicked, and I completed over 80% (this is a real figure) of my goals.

First, let me explain what I mean by 80% success. Last year, I wrote down all my goals in a document. I had about ten general topics and wrote detailed items under each. I ended up with around 30 specific items, and I only failed to make progress in five of them. It might sound like I had an incredibly successful year, but the real achievement was that my goals were very realistic. Every year, I get to know myself better, and I understand more about what I can and cannot do. As a result, my plans are more grounded in reality. I’m very pleased with the results of this year, but I made a few mistakes, and I want to focus on them to create a better plan for the upcoming year.

This year, I’ll use the same strategy to plan, and I’ll do it right now along with this post. First, I need to determine the main categories. In last year’s plan, without realising it, I had centred my goals around the mind, body, and soul trio. For this year, I want to include these three again as the first categories in my list. Next will come personal development, work, and money, followed by family/home life. You can create your list according to your own priorities.

1. Mind

2. Body

3. Soul

4. Personal Development

5. Work

6. Money

7. Family/Home

   
   

Under each main category, you should clearly list what you want to improve. It’s important to be realistic at this point. For example, if you currently don’t work out at all, setting a goal to go to the gym five days a week isn’t very realistic. For me, exercise is non-negotiable (I know it sounds like I work out a lot, but I don’t, unfortunately). I believe everyone should exercise, so working out is always on my list. Because I’m not great at it, I always set very realistic goals. In this regard, last year was quite productive for me. Let me emphasise: for me. I can’t compare myself to anyone else in this area. My fitness goal last year was simple: move/stay active. I started walking regularly and did home workouts. I met my expectations. This year, my motto is "be strong!" because I want to build my endurance. How I’ll do it, I’ll figure out along the way. I won’t say "do this on this many days per week." I’ll regularly review my goal list and decide what to do next.

I want to lose weight. That was on last year’s list. It was one of the areas where I didn’t meet my target. Why didn’t it work? Because "lose weight" is not a goal, it just doesn’t work like that. It’s a failure that’s been tried for years (there’s also the version of "lose 10 kilos!" as if it’s that easy!). The key to losing weight is changing your eating habits. This year, I’ll focus on changing my eating habits. I did make some changes last year, but I did it wrong. I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I aim to succeed next year.

One of the items on last year’s list was to develop a habit of writing regularly. Blogging has always been something I’ve wanted to do, but I struggled with it. Knowing myself, instead of setting a goal to blog, I set a goal to write regularly. At first, I started writing on certain days of the week. Once I got into the habit of writing, blogging naturally followed.

In short, instead of making your desired outcome the goal, make the actions required to achieve it your goal, and it will lead you to the outcome.

I mentioned earlier that I keep my annual goals in a digital format. You can add an image from the internet for each item as well. It makes the process more fun. At the beginning of each month, review your list and shape your monthly plans according to it. I hope you have a year full of achieving your goals, happiness, health, and success.

Happy New Year!