How to Set Resolutions

Hello darling,

I hope you enjoyed your Christmas and/or your time off and you’re now ready to leave 2017 behind, to learn from it and to set your goals for 2018.

As I’m sure I’ve told you before, I always see December as a reflective time, and I often think about how my year has been, what I have achieved, what I could have done better and what I have learnt throughout. And then I sit down and write my resolutions based on that. I know a lot of people see resolutions as a cliché, so let’s call them goals. Following my past year’s reflections, setting goals seems the natural next step. I have always written them down on NYE or on the next couple of days, but I have learnt a lot throughout the years so they have also changed significantly. To share with you my wisdom and help you set goals that you will achieve and that will make you proud of yourself, I put together a little guide. These tips are all from my own experience and my own point of view so please, do let me know if you have any further add-ons!

1.Set goals that you can truly bring to life.

So many people see their resolutions as wishes instead of goals, so they end up writing down ‘I want to fall in love’ or ‘I want to be famous’ etc. and then, if they don’t happen and they can’t tick them off at the end of the year they just assume they failed and end up saddened by their incapability to achieve their dreams. Years ago, I used to have these type of resolutions that are unachievable and which, at the end of the day, don’t necessarily depend on you. So why not change that into ‘I want to meet more people’, ‘I want to be more open to new experiences’, ‘I want to start a business’, ‘I want to go to networking events’. These baby steps will bring feelings of fulfillment and eventually boost your confidence and bring you new and clear ideas on what the next step towards your dreams is.

2. Make them measurable.

Which brings me to the next step – make sure you can tell if you fulfilled a goal or not. The difference between ‘I want to read more’ and ‘I want to read 30 books in 2018’ is that you can tell if you have achieved your goal and you can also check back from time to time to see how far you are from achieving your goal! It will keep you motivated and it will make you much more able to achieve that goal and be proud of yourself!

3. Think of the bigger picture.

Make sure all your goals are aligned to your hopes and dreams. We all have something that we really want, some of us haven’t figured out exactly what yet, but surely there is at least one tiny thing in your future that you crave to achieve. Think about that when you set your goals. Surely, it might change in time, just how your journey might – and most probably will – be different to what you have pictured it to be, but in a rushed world, it’s easy to forget where you’re going and it’s even easier to let that bring you down and make you abandon your goals. Don’t. Just remember where you’re going and you will get there, one way or another.

I hope these tips helped, I will definitely use them while writing down my goals on NYE. I feel very motivated and so ready to start 2018! I wanted to share these pictures with you in the hope that I will send this feeling of determination to you too and so I pictured the classic suit with a twist, because our journey will always have twists and turns, but as long as we believe in ourselves, we will reach our end goal. So don’t write down goals that are expected of you, don’t follow a paved path, go out there and get what’s yours, work your ass off and live the life you built for yourself. And, please, please, please be kind along the way. Say something nice, make a compliment, help a person in need, spread love and make this world a better place in 2018.

See you next year!

Cheers to a great 2018! D.