Making New Year's resolutions that are easy to keep! - Making your plan (4 min read)

This is the third part of a series of guides to help you make New Year’s resolutions that you can keep throughout the whole year. Don’t worry if you haven’t been following up until now. New Year’s resolutions can be made throughout the new year. Personally I prefer to do it as the land turns from Winter to Spring so that my journey follows nature’s cycle around me. However if you want to follow this guide you need to go and have a look at the part one (Get inspired) and part two (Creating the vision) of this series, otherwise what you are about to read simply won’t make sense.

To those of you who have been following the steps you are hopefully raring to start working on your dreams and goals for this year and after this last week you will have a crystal clear vision of the changes you wish to make.

Holding the vision is important and will make your dreams easier to manifest. However a vision is not enough. If you don’t know what you need to work on and how to do that then you vision remains a dream, a nice picture in your mind and an unfulfilled goal. So what next? How can you make your vision become a reality. The answer is really, really simple. Make a plan.

You may have heard the 5 P’s Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Now I do in part agree with this, on the other hand I find it a stressful and demanding. In my book proper planning gets stuff done.

But what do I mean by planning? There are many ways to do this. The simplest I have found is to take each goal and define the steps you have to take to create this. This week you have two steps to follow. Give yourself good time to think this through and record your ideas. This is the foundation, the roots of the work you will be fullfill this year. Make strong roots adn you will have a strong plant. If you make a strong plan you will have better results.

Make a plan

Now say for example your goal this year is to travel a country for three months. In this case you have some very clear decisions to make and steps to follow.

Choose which country you want to go to

Research the ways you wish to travel, hotels, youth hostels, work away and what you want to see.
Research the cost of your trip.
Save money.
Book time off work.
Book your holiday
Go.

In this case it’s very simple. You can even set target dates on each of the steps. But what if your goal is not a clear to create for example to improve your self confidence. In this case you need to do a lot of background thinking to achieve this goal. Also you have to be realistic. Can you do this in one year? Or will you have to spread this over a few years? In which case what do you want to achieve in this year? With goals such as this you can still make a plan in the same way as for travel. You just need to think it through more. One of my life coaching clients made this plan for improving one part of her self confidence over one year, by focusing on self love.

Identify what it is I don’t like about myself.
Talk about this with my life coach.
Find a strategy for each issue with my life coach.
Begin one strategy each month.
Write a gratitude list every morning or evening.
Use a self love affirmation every morning in the mirror while I brush my hair.

One year one my client is more confident and happier within herself. Together we have identified and implemented 3 strategies in her life to improve her relationship with herself. Her self confidence isn’t completely in place, however it is beginning to be less of a hinderance in her daily life and her life quality is improving.

The steps to take are easy when making your plan.

Choose one goal.
Clearly define it.
Write a list of the steps you need to take in order to achieve your goal.
Set a start date.
Set a completion date
Do the same with all of your goals.

Evaluate and adapt your goals:

Making a plan is also a great way to evaluate your goals and dreams for this year. Are they realistic. When you break it down into bite size chunks and there are too many steps or impossible tasks then you need to redefine your goals.

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Enjoy this process. Make it simple. Make your plans realistic. And remember to make it fun. The whole point for me in life is about enjoying the journey. Life does not have to always be hard work. Keep this in focus as you are planning. After all the resolutions you make and want to keep should be improving your own life quality other wise there is not much point in making them!
Have a fantastic and motivating week. Next week is the last part of this series so tune in again on monday to begin making the changes you dream of in your life and to begin living the life you have dreamt of.