Your guide to setting New Year’s resolutions

With a new year just around the corner, now’s the perfect time to look back on the previous one. Taking stock of how you responded to challenges and what you learned from your successes can help you figure out the best ways to reach new ones. Examine what worked for you, and what didn’t, over the past three to six months, then create a plan for moving forward.

1. Reflect on your successes. Consider which changes you made quickly. What did you do to make them happen, and how did those positive steps help you?

2. Evaluate your challenges. Now think about the things that didn’t work for you and what obstacles got in your way. How can you alter your approach next time?

3. Know where you’re going. Create a longer-term goal to achieve by the end of February. Visualize what success looks like, how you’ll feel, and what you need to overcome to get there.

4. Set a weekly goal. Based on what you’ve learned, identify a specific (and truly doable) step that you can take towards your longer-term goal this week. How will you respond to anything that gets in your way?

One helpful way to reflect can be journaling. One recent study showed that people who write down their goals are anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to successfully accomplish those goals than people who don’t.