Make the Most of Resolutions

As some of us can attest, setting goals for ourselves is usually not the tough part—it’s following through. To better your chances for reaching goals and keeping resolutions try approaching them with self-awareness and a firmer grasp on tiny habits.

A good first step is getting into a growth mindset, which allows us to see challenges as opportunities for improvement, not peril. This outlook can help us celebrate the victories, but go easy on ourselves when things don’t go according to plan.

Once the growth mindset is activated, we can begin setting reasonable objectives.

If goals are the destinations we want to someday reach, then the systems we put in place are the paths we take to get there. Those paths might be long or short, direct or winding, downhill or up, but we still have to walk them no matter what.

If your goal is to learn how to play the guitar, your system is practicing for ten minutes before you go to bed each night.

The more we commit to the system, instead of just the end goal, the more progress we can make. That’s because, unlike a goal, a system is something we can put in practice every day. A goal is great for motivating us, but it often isn’t immediately attainable. A system, on the other hand, gives us something we can accomplish on a daily basis. Taking a systematic approach can also:

• Reduce Unnecessary Stress – Reminding ourselves how close (or far) we are from the finish line can amount to a lot of pressure. We can ditch worries about the goal, and instead redirect that energy into sticking with our system.
• Pay off in the Long Run – Self-improvement isn’t a one-time deal, it’s an ongoing process. Systems-thinking helps us maintain good habits even after we’ve hit our goal, and that adds up to lifelong growth.
• Help Keep Us in the Present – Anchoring our actions and attention in the here and now helps us avoid losing our focus to an uncertain future.

In the past, we’ve discussed the remarkable power of developing tiny habits to generate big life changes. (Click here for more about that.) The basic magic of tiny habits is that they:

1. Reduce big goals into simple activities you can easily perform
2. Anchor those activities to something you do every day; and
3. Reward you with more opportunities to celebrate after the completion of each activity

If you’d like to set up some goal-reaching systems that will take your tiny habits to the next level, here are some simple tweaks you might try.

1. Simplify, simplify, simplify: If you set up an activity that’s too big, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by it. Try simplifying it even more until you can nail it with ease.
2. The when technique: Try anchoring your tiny habits with a when statement, like, “When the commercials come on while I’m watching Big Bang Theory tonight, I’m going to hop up and do jumping jacks.”
3. Cut down the choices: Too many options can overwhelm and confuse us. If your goal is to do more cardio, choose one activity (like the elliptical) that you can do consistently, rather than brainstorming five different sports leagues to join.
4. See it, be it: Visualization is a very powerful tool for developing tiny habits. And, again, visualization is most effective when it’s used to imagine the system in detail, rather than fantasize about the goal in the abstract.