Revisit Your Resolutions
Recover in the Winter
Maybe winter isn't the best time for you to make sudden changes. Winter is often a time for reflection, staying in, eating comfort foods and going to bed early. Use the quiet season to think about your life, set your goals and write your plan. If you want to train for a marathon but can't run outside (and hate driving to the gym), don't give up on the dream. Just wait until spring.
Ask Yourself Why
After you've decided on the goals you truly want, next it's time to sit down and ask yourself why you want to hit these goals. If you don't know why you're doing these things, then you know why you fell off track.
Figure Out Your Skills
As you're filtering out the good resolutions from the bad, and some really important ones begin to surface, that is the time to start deciding what skills you have in order to realize the goal. Are you a great planner, a great listener, patient? Dig down deep and find what about you makes you able to accomplish big new goals.
General Plan
Come up with a general plan—not only for how you're going to meet these amazing goals, but also how these things plug into the rest of your life. If the goal was to write a novel, how is that full-time job going to knock you off course? If the goal was to exercise daily, will your killer commute undermine that? Once you see your life and these changes as a whole, you'll be able to strategize about how to meet them.
Spell It Out
Define your goals by using the SMART principles, whose criteria are commonly attributed to management consultant Peter Drucker. That is, identify the changes you want to make that fit the following categories:
__S__pecific, significant, stretching
__M__easurable, meaningful, motivational
__A__chievable, agreed upon, action-oriented, acceptable
__R__ealistic, reasonable, rewarding, relevant
__T__imely, trackable, time-based, tangible
Plan in Steps
Make step-by-step plans before trying to meet the goals. When you get overwhelmed or start to falter, you'll have a road map to return to. Take as much of the thinking out of the day-to-day effort to meet your goals. Eventually, the tough stuff will become habit.
