“New Year – new me“, you most probably heard this expression, maybe even used it yourself. Time has no limits, but somehow we love to divide it into periods and connect our life with it. Everything should be started from Monday, a new month or year. Sounds a little silly, if you think about it, but it is what it is.

Lots of people love setting huge resolutions, wanting to drastically change their lives and become a whole another person by the end of the year. From the very beginning, this mindset is kinda wrong, because instead of wanting to improve, we want to transform into another human being, which is impossible. That’s why most of these resolutions and goals never get achieved, leaving lots of disappointed people, who don’t believe that they can ever become better.

I myself don’t set any resolutions for a few years now, because I try to be more spontaneous and go with the flow. However I decided to share some tips that will help you with your goals for this year.

1. Be realistic. Most people reckon, that once one number of the year changes, everything will magically change as well, just like in Cinderella’s fairy tale. For instance, a person who hasn’t even read 3 books in the previous year, decides to read one book every week. That’s why most resolutions fail from the very beginning, because they are unrealistic as hell. Before setting resolutions, make sure to remember your true self, your habits, working schedule and even your laziness level. And instead of deciding to finish a book a week, make a resolutions to read 10 new books throughout the year. And how awesome it will feel, when instead of the set 10 books, you’ll have 13 or 15 read books by the end of the year.

2. Don’t be too specific. For example, your resolution is to become thinner. Instead of writing “I want to loose 10kg”, or “I want to go to the gym every single day“, be more general. Maybe you’ll loose only 5kg, or instead of gym you’ll start hiking or doing pilates, it doesn’t mean that the resolution is failed. Be more flexible, the resolutions shouldn’t be mandatory, they’re your own achievements or wishes. Maybe in January you decided to learn skating, but later realized that you’d rather learn biking. You’re a human being, who can change their opinion. You’re going in the right direction, still being in the process. Speaking of which…

3. Don’t focus on the results. Believe me, if you don’t enjoy the process, being fully concentrated on the outcome, you’ll never be happy with it, even if you actually loose 15kg or read two books a week. Life is a journey, not a destination. You have probably had cases, when you did something for fun, and its result turned out much better, than the one you planned for days and weeks. Also, it’s like watching a movie solely for its ending, and not the plot in general, doesn’t really make sense.

4. Choose what you actually like. In order to enjoy the process, you need to do what you like. For example, if you hate gym, but enjoy swimming, choose the latter one for a resolution. In that way, you’ll do something that is not only good and beneficial for you, but also fun and enjoyable. And you will never want to give this goal up, because you actually love doing it. Don’t make such resolutions you don’t really care about. For instance, if all your friends say that they’re going to eat healthy this year, it doesn’t mean that you should do it too, just because others are doing it.

5. Set 1-3 big resolutions. Everything we have and do is energy. We can’t juggle with multiple tasks or activities, otherwise we won’t have enough energy to finish any of those well. So, instead of writing dozens of resolutions, pick a few big ones, the ones that are important and matter the most for you right now.