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It happens every January. New Year’s goal setting, otherwise knows as New Year’s resolutions. It seems that a large percentage of us receive a burst of inventive energy right after the holidays and begin to set idealistic goals for ourselves. We decide to lose ten pounds, change jobs, or entirely change our lives.

What’s wrong with us? Do we have some kind of weird masochistic tendencies that lie concealed in our DNA all year long until January comes around? We must. It’s a sad reality that New Year’s resolutions are usually temporary if not completely forgotten by February. Are we doomed to and endless circle of goal setting and failure?

Can we actually make goal setting for the New Year successful? Can we interrupt the chain of miserable failure? Yes, the good news is that we can be successful with our New Year goal setting. We can succeed if we abide by a few simple steps.

In goal setting, the first thing you must do is select goals that are believable and possible for you. They have to be the proper goals for the right reasons. If you don’t think that you can accomplish them, then you are doomed from the beginning. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds this year and you don’t think you’ll be able to do it, then you’ve set yourself up for failure.

Effective goal setting has to include thought and deliberation. Think long and hard about what you want to accomplish. Make a decision that the goal you have chosen has significance for you and you are willing to commit to achieving it.

Make your goals achievable but not so low that they lose significance for you. Then again, don’t set them so high that you get disheartened. This is a tricky area of goal setting. The solution is to break your goals down into smaller chunks that you can achieve. For example, if you goal is to lose 10 pounds, then set a reachable goal of one or two pounds a week. This will help keep you motivated.

Another technique for goal setting is to be specific. Set a date that you want to reach a specific goal and then work backward, breaking it down in to smaller chunks. If your New Year’s goal is to “lose weight,” then you’re defeated before you start. It is more powerful to decide that you want to lose ten pounds by March 1st. Stating it this way makes the goal solid and believable to you. You’re a good deal more likely to accomplish a specific goal with a time frame than a vaguely expressed goal.

Write your goals down and post them, so that you see them frequently. This reinforces your goal setting. You might try standing in front of a mirror and saying your goals out loud every day. This also makes your goals a formal commitment. Don’t give up. Goal setting can help us make positive changes in our lives if we follow a few easy rules.

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