No matter what anybody says about how New Year’s resolutions don’t stick, we still get encouraged to set goals for the new year because the new year marks the start of something new.
A fresh start. Day 1 of 365 starts again and we want to achieve and do the things we hoped for in the last year.
I too would like to encourage you to set goals for the new year no matter what. And to remember that, actually, every day is a new year because it’s been exactly one year since today last year.
This year, start to see each day as a new year. Start with a clean slate and a new year’s state of mind every day.
Goals are not just for January. It is every day of the week that we must work on.
Even if we slip, it’s okay. It should be expected. What matters is that you pick yourself back up again. Remember to come back to yourself no matter how long it’s been.
There is no need to feel guilty. Guilt is in the past and nothing can be done about that. But something can always be done in the present and it’s the only moment that matters.
So for this new year, set aside perfection and set realistic goals to work on.
Make this new year a year of quitting unhealthy patterns and adding good habits, joy, communication and good health.
30 Realistic New Year Goals
Table of Contents
1. Win in the morning
This new year decide to work on how your mornings feel and look like.
Win in the morning and you win your day.
Don’t just simply wake up to rush off for work, but this year allow yourself some time and spend the mornings slowly.
Follow a healthy morning routine to give the morning time strictly to yourself and your growth this year and see how it changes your life.
Spend the first 90 minutes after you wake up on something good for yourself. It can be reading, journaling, meditating, drinking tea mindfully or doing the hard thing that you’re avoiding first thing in the morning.
Here are 10 morning habits to start for a better day and if you’re short on time, here is a doable one-hour morning routine.
2. Read one book every month
Another must-have goal to set for the new year is to decide on a book to read for a month.
Try to read at least one book every month. If you do that, you will be reading 12 books in a year.
And if you read two books- one in the morning and one in the evening, that means you read 24 books in a year.
I read self-help and educational books in the morning and evenings are for novels and biographies.
Here is how I make time to read every day.
3. Walk a minimum of 5000 steps every day
Set a goal to walk more this year and decide to walk at least 5000 steps every day.
If a place can be visited by walking, take the walk instead of calling an Uber.
Take the stairs instead of the lift and track your steps.
4. Improve sleep cycle
There is something about the time that we’re living, maybe because of too much work pressure and the invasion of social media and phones that almost everybody’s sleep cycle is down the drain.
A bad sleep cycle is also a big cause of depression. I say this because I’ve experienced it myself.
When I started to work on improving my sleep cycle and started sleeping at a normal time- by 10:30 pm, I started to feel so much better and at peace.
It was difficult at first, but I decided to go to bed by 10:30 pm even if sleep didn’t come.
I wouldn’t check my phone even if I felt sleepy and worked a lot on improving my sleep.
Slowly the mind recognised the change and it became a pattern again.
Improving my sleep cycle helped me improve my mental health a lot.
And here are other small tiny habits that improved my mental health.
5. Give 30 minutes to learning something new
We say we don’t have time, but we can all tweak 30 minutes daily into our routine.
If you still say you don’t have time, look at your phone and check how much time you’ve spent on your phone.
I bet it won’t be less than one hour. For many of us, it may even exceed 5-6 hours.
If you can spend 1-3 hours on your phone, you can give 30 minutes to learning something new each day.
Decide what that will be.
If you could give 30 minutes to learn something new, what would that be?
6. Work on responding, not reacting
This year work on responding to things, events, people and situations instead of reacting.
The reason why things get hard and complicated and we bring in more stress is because we are quick to react.
If we take time and work on this quality of ours, it would go a long way in helping us be happy, and avoid judgements, fights and unnecessary drama.
7. Don’t avoid hard things
This new year, set a goal to not avoid hard things, whether it be hard work, a conversation, communication, starting a project or anything.
The more you avoid hard things, the harder your life will be.
Doing the hard thing is what makes life easy.
As Seneca says, “It’s not because things are difficult that we do not dare, its because we do not dare that life is difficult”
8. Exercise every day
Exercise is not just good for the body, but also the mind.
Exercise is self-care. It improves our resilience, and our determination and removes stress from our body.
This year set a goal to exercise for attest 20-30 minutes each day.
You can start with 10 minutes too. Even 10 minutes of moving your body is great. You don’t have to work on getting abs and doing hard-core exercises from the start.
That will make you avoid exercise in the first place.
Just simply focus on moving all the different parts of your body. Then grow from there.
Here is how I made myself love working out.
Currently, I’m doing Chloe Ting’s 18-Day Challenge from her website where we can also set a fitness schedule and mark a day as complete.
For light exercise and Yoga, I love Jesica Richburg on YouTube.
9. Limit Screen time
Track your screen time this year.
If you are an Apple user, you can easily see this on your phone.
You can even see the number of times you’ve picked up your phone in a day.
We start to become more aware and mindful when we start to track something.
So if you want to limit your screen time, start tracking it and deliberately work on limiting it.
In this post, I’ve shared easy ways to reduce your screen time.
10. Learn a new skill
This new year, decide on learning a new skill.
These days there are so many ways and opportunities to learn whatever we want to.
You can learn on YouTube or you can take an online course.
Don’t hesitate to spend money on learning and growing.
They are not money spent, but money invested because it will come back to you in 10-20 folds if you apply them correctly and are sincere.
Blogging is a skill I didn’t have before, but after spending time learning and doing it, it has become easier.
For this I had to spend money on my learning and at first I hesitated a lot, but it paid back almost 100 times!
Now I don’t hesitate to invest money if it helps me to learn and grow my knowledge in something.
You too can try the same this year.
P.S here are 30 things to learn when bored
11. Spend Quality time with family
This year strive to create more happy times with family.
Spend time with your family and work on your relationships with them.
We tend to take them for granted as time passes, but you should remind yourself every morning what a blessing it is to have them in you and be able to love and spend time with them.
So many times so much of our time gets wasted on anger and fights which could be better spent loving each other.
Staying angry is such a waste of time.
This year set a goal to have more happy and quality time with your partner and loved ones at home.
For this you can set a goal to pray together every day, eat your dinner together, go to bed at the same time, not use your phone after getting into bed together, start each day with a hug and kiss and spend time cuddling and relaxing together.
They all help in increasing bonding. And it is our bonding and relationships that make us happy, peaceful and relaxed big time.
12. Eat more fruits and vegetables
Set a goal to eat more fruits and vegetables and less junk and processed food.
Here are some tips on how you can add more fruits and veggies into your diet this new year.
13. Limit alcohol
You must learn to enjoy life without alcohol. You must learn to deal with things without alcohol.
If this year you want to give up on alcohol, you must first dive deep into your need for alcohol.
What causes you to drink alcohol? From where does the need arise? And why do you intend to give it up?
Just saying you want to limit alcohol will get you nowhere. You have to first understand the tendencies and first cut off the root cause and find better ways to deal with it.
14. Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness is a wonderful goal we can set for ourselves this year.
In a culture of forgetfulness and carelessness, let us strive to work on being more mindful.
But mindful of what?
- Mindful of our feelings
- Mindful of our breath
- Mindful of what we’re doing at the present moment
- Mindful of our thoughts
- Mindful of what we’re avoiding
- Mindful of our resistance
- Mindful of our anger
- Mindful of our intentions
- Mindful of what we’re eating
Here is a beginner’s guide on how to practice mindfulness.
15. Meditate every day
Another good goal to set for the new year is to sit for meditation every day.
Set a goal to meditate every morning and evening for 10-20 minutes.
This will change the way you live each day making you more calm, relaxed and less reactive.
It will help you deal with things and situations in a better manner and will make you happier as you live with more intention.
Currently, I love this channel called Great Meditation for daily guided meditation.
16. Pray every day
Similar to meditating every day, set a goal to also pray every day.
If you are married or you live with a partner, set a goal to pray together.
I truly feel that those who pray together live together more happily and can work together as a team.
There will be more love and harmony and peace will surround your family.
You can also keep a prayer journal and write your prayers every week or every month.
P.S Here is why I pray and how to pray
17. Do one thing at a time
This year don’t give in to overwhelm and do only one thing at a time.
Even if you have a lot on your plate, multitasking only makes things harder.
Stick with one thing at a time. Finish it and then move on to another task.
This is a great goal you can strive to stick with this year.
18. Stick to a budget
Organise your money better and stick to a budget.
This new year set a budget for yourself and keep specific percentages of your income for different categories.
For example, you can keep 20% for savings, 30% for yourself, 10% for travel, 10% for marriage, 5% for donation, 5% for emergency fund or whatever it is that you’d like to keep.
I manage my money better this way and I have many savings accounts for separate purposes.
Here is how you can stick to your budget better.
19. Go on more solo dates
Set a goal to go out with yourself, just yourself once every week and do something fun and interesting just for yourself.
Add this solo date into your life and build a wonderful relationship with yourself.
Here are solo date ideas to start loving yourself more.
P.S. Also, How to love yourself better.
20. Improve communication
This new year work on improving your communication whether it be with your partner, your friends or your family.
If you hardly call your parents, make it a goal to call them and check up on them at least once a week.
Do the same with your friends. Check up on them from time to time. Don’t go months without talking to them.
Call them just because you want to talk to them and know how they are doing.
If it’s someone’s birthday and you have their number, wish them on call instead of just dropping a message.
Work on building positive communications with people and leave them feeling better after they meet you.
21. Get financially educated
This year became financially educated. For this, you can read more books on wealth creation, and changing your money habits and money beliefs.
I’ve come to know that Money mindset is really important. If you want to make more money and have more abundance in your life, you have to first work on changing your long-held limiting money beliefs.
When I changed my money mindset that is when I started believing that I could make more money and truly started believing in my potential.
Books helped a lot and continue to help me increase my earning potential.
Here are the best books to read for building wealth and changing your money mindset
- Think and grow rich
- The richest man in Babylon
- The Millionaire Fastlane
- You are a badass at making money
- Psychology of Money
22. Practice gratitude
Cultivate more gratitude into your life and be determined to cut off complaints from your life this year.
If you’re complaining about something and it can be changed, then change it instead of lamenting and complaining.
And if it can’t be changed, then why waste your energy and drain yourself complaining when it’s no use?
Learn to take responsibility for yourself and be grateful for all that occurs.
Everything happens for a reason.
If you want to have more gratitude this year, you should try my 21-day Gratitude Challenge where you will receive one challenge and guidance every day for the next 21 days to fill your life with more gratitude.
23. Keep your life organized
Get your life together this year and keep it organised.
Our life is a collection of different parts- it includes how we keep our home, our belongings, our desks, our kitchen, and how we organize our days and spend our time.
We can’t get our life together until our routines, our habits and our home are not in order.
Our outer environment also has a great hold on how we feel about our lives.
If you want to organize your life, start with organising your surroundings and it will slowly spread.
Here is my beginner’s guide on how to organize your life and 75 habits to get your life organised.
24. Engage in a hobby
Hobbies are essential for our well-being.
It is something that we do just for fun and because we like to do it and not because we have a motive to make money, because it is required for our promotion or anything.
I’ve written a separate post on why you should make time for hobbies and if you need ideas on what hobbies you can start in the new year, here are 50+ Hobby Ideas to have fun
25. Start an emergency fund
This new year start saving for an emergency fund if you haven’t already.
Set a goal to save $1000 first and then gradually increase your savings.
Here are 12 Financial challenges you could try this new year to start saving
26. Stop wasting time
How do you spend your time?
This new year track your time and all the activities you spend time in.
Make two columns. On the left side note down all the activities you would like to do and activities that make you happy and give you energy and on the right side note down the things that you’re doing every day.
Then make the changes.
Commit to stop wasting time on unnecessary things and use your time wisely.
27. Travel to new places
Set a goal to go on a vacation no matter what.
Get excited about a trip and plan it.
Don’t let anything deter you and change your plans.
There will always be some or the other obligation to look after and if you keep waiting for the perfect time, the time to travel will pass on.
See new places, and new landscapes, eat new food and understand different cultures.
This year I had set a goal of traveling to one new place every quarter and it did come true.
I also did my first-ever solo trip and here are 5 lessons I learned from travelling solo
Life is for living and traveling makes us feel more alive.
28. No single-use plastic
This new year also commit to not using any single-use plastic and lessen your plastic consumption.
Order less online if they bring food or other products in plastic bags and containers.
Always carry a bag when you go out. Have your cup, water bottle, spoon and fork while travelling or anywhere.
All of these small changes can also go a long way in curbing plastic pollution and being more sustainable.
29. Quit smoking
Quitting smoking is also another goal you can set for yourself this new year.
You can start by cutting back on it slowly and set some restrictions for yourself.
30. Care less
Lastly, even though this may not be a SMART goal, this is a realistic goal you can set for yourself, and that is to care less.
Care less about what other people think. Care less about the little things that may be bothering you, but do care more about your relationships, your health, your intentions, and your dreams and start building the life of your dreams.
The more you care less about other people’s opinion of you, the more you start living for yourself and increase your mental peace and well-being.
So these are some goals and ideas that you can set for the new year
Keep working on them and keep coming back to them.
What matters is your resilience and your ability to come back each time you fall back.
Don’t let the past stop you from creating your future from this moment on.
What you do from this moment on is all that matters.
Take care of your goals and you take care of your life.
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