And here’s the challenging part. Now that all the excitement and the holidays are gone, life starts to get in the way of new goals and habits.

You see most of the people I have talked to tell me that they always find it easier to set a new goal and create a roadmap to achieve that goal. They also find it quite easy to start on a new goal but what most of them tell me is that somewhere down the road the motivation fades away, life gets in the way and the goals start getting pushed aside just a little more everyday.

You know what this leads to? The all familiar stress, sense of defeat and overall a horrible feeling.

It’s that horrible feeling that we want to avoid PLUS we also want to achieve our goals…that’s why we set them right?

Yes, there are a few very important things you can do right at the beginning when you set your goals to make sure they motivate you and help you get through challenges (and we’ll talk more about that over the coming weeks) but what I want to talk about right now is something you can do right now without going back to goal setting mode again.

This step is very easy to do but has a huge payoff. Please do not skip it! Alright, here’s what you need to do:

1. You need to create a good support system

Basically, your support system is something that can keep you going when all you want to do is throw in the towel. It needs to have the ability to keep you from giving up and should be able to help you stay on track.

Your support system can be as simple as a group of friends who call you to check up on how you’re doing with your goals every once in a while or a simple reward system you set up for yourself.

Here’s a few examples

1. Your buddies: If you have a friend (or a few friends) you can share everything with: a. You’re very lucky and b. you can ask them to help you out with your goals by checking up on you.  Tell your friend what your goals for the week are and ask them to check in a week later, this really works for people who need a little outside push to keep going. Having a real person on the other side ask me about my goals really gives me an extra push so this is something I use regularly for a lot of the rather challenging goals and projects.
2. Progress Tracking for habits: The thing with habits is that once you do something repeatedly for more than 30 days it becomes a part of your routine. Of course, those 30 days are the hardest. You can use anything from a complex software to simple pen and paper matrix to track your habits and stay motivated. I prefer the simplistic approach. Of course, you can use excel or an online service to do the same thing but I’ve found that the print method works much better for me and for a lot of people because remembering to look into excel or go to the goal tracking website is quite hard itself but when it’s pen and paper, it’s on your desk so that makes it easier to remember.
3. Journals/Good notes:If you are someone who really likes to spend sometime clearly writing everything down and reflecting everyday this could be your best support system. For those of you who find journalling a chore (myself included), try using a different approach. Personally, I use a timelog (yes those horrible timelogs that’s used in most companies..but hey, they work even if you are just working for yourself) and a  simple system to deal with daily input, goals and projects and everything else (this is where most people get stuck because they get overwhelmed with everything they have to do, everything that’ blowing up and everything they want to do. Journalling can help you a little here but creating a system that works for you is a much more effective and rewarding approach here. You can learn how to do that here) You can also try experimenting with journalling a little (it doesn’t have to be structured) and see how that works for you.
4. Mentors and coaches: Mentors and coaches are just amazing in helping you reach your goals. You just need to find the right one and we’ll talk more about that later but what I want you to remember for now is that your mentor or coach can be a friend or someone in the family as well. It doesn’t have to be a structured setting with a certified coach or anything too complex.

Alright, that should give you a couple starting points in creating your own support system. The next step is to decide which ones you want to use and set it up! You’re going to need it very soon, trust me on that!

1.    photo credit: Ed Battle1

Alright we’ve talked about why we need goals and how to make sure we stick to them. The next step is to make sure we work on them everyday.

Here’s what you need to do to take your plan (whether it’s opening a new business, losing more weight whatever it is) to successful implementation.

Progressive Goals (Like, a business, new project etc)

1. Take a look at your plans and break them down into specific miletone goals.

Let’s take Start a New Business as an example, some goals for this would be market research, finding a good location etc.

2. Now take your goals and break them down into specific actions

Let’s take our business goal and look at the market research part of it. Here’s how you can further break it down:

• Go to the library and look at Market Research Analysis
• Talk to contacts in the same niche
• Research new start ups in the past 5 years

3. Here’s the easiest part. All you need to do now is to think about the actions you need to take for each of the bullets mentioned above and assign a date for completion.

Just mark those dates on your calendar, put the action on your agenda and you’re done!

Recurring Goals (like habits)

Recurring goals are a little easier in that they involve less paperwork and complexity. To get started with a recurring goal, you want to break it down again and put them on your calendar with specific review dates where you plan to asses how you are doing.

Take exercising for an example:

Break that down into what kind of exercising. Maybe that involves stretching in the morning, running in the afternoon or going swimming on Saturdays. Whatever your form of exercise is…schedule it in your agenda.

You make schedules for important business meetings…don’t you? Your health is just as important. Put that into your schedule as well.

Remember to set reminders!

photo credit: DarkSideX

You see, there’s one little thing you can do this year to make sure that you follow through with your new year’s resolutions even if you’ve never followed through with any of your resolutions before.

Ready?

Here’s what you need to do. You need to create a plan to stick to your new year’s resolutions. And here’s why:

Some of you know that Tony Robbins has had a great influence on me and one of the things he always says is Never leave the site of setting a goal without making a plan. Look, when you don’t make a plan for yourself you do not have any obligation to follow through on your goals or resolutions.

It’s the Plan that gives you the motivation (or at least tells you what to do) when all the motivation from reading a book or listening to a speaker is gone.

But the main reason I like to make a plan as soon as I have a new goal is this: I don’t have to think about it! I don’t have to worry about forgetting it or not working on it…it’s all in the plan and in my schedule so it starts to become something like second nature and that’s exactly where you want to be with your resolutions…don’t you?

And we’ll talk about going from a plan into step by step actions that you can take later..but for now let’s plan things out.

1. The first thing I want you to do is visualize (or think about) what your goal would look like or what you’d look like as a result of your new year’s resolutions in a year. Think about all the specifics.

If your goal is to lose weight, how much weight? If the goal is to setup a new business, what is that business going to look like in a year? If the goal is to get new clients, how many new clients?

2. Now you need to start thinking of where you are right now. Think about how you’re currently doing with your resolutions and write that down.

3. List all your assets that are going to help you get to where you want. Think about key contacts, money, past experiences, anything that could help you.

4. The next step is to figure out exactly what you need to do to get to where you have visualized yourself at on Dec 31, 2010.

Listen, we all have some sort of general ideas about what we need to do to achieve our goals and all I’m asking you to do is to jot them down on paper for now. And, if you feel like there’s a gap that you aren’t sure about just ask your contacts (who’ve had success doing what you want to do) or refer to a book/magazine/trusted article that can help you out a little.

Take a couple days to complete this exercise and I’ll show you how to take your rough plan and turn it into a step by step action plan for easy and stress free way to stick to your new year’s resolution.

photo credit: Lazurite