New Years resolutions vs. Goals

I personally don't like to make resolutions, probably because in the past I wouldn't finish them. I'm talking like days to weeks after January 1 I would fail.

That tells me that the resolution wasn't important to me. I was coming up with a list of things I wanted to change, or thought I needed to change because it was the thing to do. It was what everyone else was doing and talking about. So I created a list, and never carried it through the end. So I stopped doing it altogether.

But the last couple of years I have had a goal that I wanted to attempt. To me this was a little different than a resolution. Just different enough that it helped me do a better job at completing the goal.

Here is how they are different in my eyes.

Resolutions: these were to broad for me. To much of " I'm going to be a better person this year" or " I'm going to make more money." It's great to want to be a better person but how am I going to better myself, what area needs the most work, and what action was I going to take to complete it, and then how was I going to measure if I succeeded? I was setting myself up for failure from the very beginning.

Goals: these were more fined tuned for me. Much more specific. I now say that I am going to lose 30 pounds by changing my eating habits and exercising 2-3 days a week. I then can take the eating habits and break it down into some items I am eliminating from my diet and some foods I will be adding to. I then take the exercise aspect and begin to create some specific tasks with some timelines.

Whether you like resolutions or goals, the biggest key to success is to create an end result that is reachable, but yet challenges you as well. Oh, and it has to be important to you or you will struggle with it.