New Year’s resolutions not going to plan? Trouble sticking to your goals? Lost traction after only a few hours/days/weeks? Well here are seven ideas to get you back on track…

1. Change your goal. The smaller your goal, the easier it will be to achieve and so the easier you will find it to get started. So break down any big goal – lose 50 pounds, run a marathon, clean out the garage- into smaller, more manageable bits. So start with lose 10 pounds (or 5 if ten is too much), run 1km, clean out the first two boxes of stuff near the garage door. You get the idea. A big goal seems great because, yeah, it would be good to do that, but if the sheer size of it is actually demotivating… not so good.
2. Change your timeframe. A short timeframe increases pressure. That can be a good thing if you thrive on pressure to perform, but if it makes something feel impossible if you have a few less-than-perfect days then it is not at all helpful. And picture this, say you are wanting to lose weight, would it be so bad to have lost it in six months rather than three, or whatever? You will still have lost it, and to me, the more realistic timeframe makes it more likely, not less. Also, it’s unlikely that you will sustain enthusiasm for an idea across a year (‘I’m going to jog every morning this year!’), so try breaking your goals down into months, or 5 week blocks or even week at a time. Enough that you can get something achieved, but not so long that it loses meaning.
3. Enlist support. Find someone to be on your team. A spouse, family member, friend, colleague, fellow online community member. Someone kind and encouraging. Do the activity with them, or at least get them to cheer you through the rough patches and the successes. Be that support for someone else, too.
4. Be kind to yourself. Even before you enlist others, be kind and encouraging to yourself! Build yourself up with your self-talk. Watch any sneaky ‘I’m so hopeless’ or ‘what a loser’, ‘I never…’ etc. Change the way you talk to yourself to change the way you think about yourself. And be kind, you’re the only you there is!
5. Change ‘I should’ into ‘I want to’. ‘Shoulds’ are such a killjoy. As soon as something is a should, we don’t wanna! So don’t talk about the things you want to do in should terms: ‘I really should go walking today’, instead rephrase it in a positive way: ‘I want to go walking today’, ‘I’m lucky to have the chance to go walking today’ etc. It’s just a little tweak, but it makes a difference.
6. Find something you enjoy. If it’s exercise, find a way of moving that you enjoy. Let go of what you think you should be doing, and do whatever you can do regularly. Liking to do something means you won’t need ‘motivation’ for it. If it’s something else, like cleaning out the garage, put on some music or a podcast to take your mind off it. If it’s losing weight, find some appropriate meals that you really love. And in any of the cases, try some kind of reward to celebrate your efforts and keep you going.
7. Keep it in your focus. It sounds silly, but sometimes you can get to the end of the day, having done your normal daily things and have totally forgotten there was a change you were trying to make. So keep it in your focus. A reminder on your phone, a note stuck to your bathroom mirror, an appointment in your diary, an item on your to do list, whatever works. And even set a time with yourself to reassess your goals and your progress.