Setting New Years’ Resolutions With Your Daughter That Will Last
It happens every year, without fail. The ball drops, and you set your intentions for the year. Start eating healthier, start working out, saving more money, kick a bad habit.
And then, a few months in, and bam! Those resolutions are out the window. Why?
It could be one of two things. A lot of times, people try setting 100 different goals and end up biting off more than they can chew. Or, they’re so discouraged by the lack of visible progress, that they throw up their hands and surrender. If it doesn’t happen overnight, they lose patience and give up.
With 2021 just around the corner, it’s time to start setting goals and sticking to them. If you and your daughter are looking ahead to the new year and deciding what needs to be done, here are a few helpful tips on how to find what’s most important, and stick to it.
First things first: be specific in your goals. Don’t try to do so many different things, that you lose track and end up accomplishing nothing. Focus on a handful of key focuses for the new year. One to three attainable goals that are most important.
Does she want to improve her grade in math? Graduate at the top of her class? Get her first job? Pick up a new hobby? Hone in on what’s most important to accomplish, write it down, create a vision board that you can hang up and look back to daily: whatever you have to do to remind yourself of the end goal.
Once you’ve narrowed it down to a few core objectives for the year, it’s time to focus on the baby steps instead of the giant leaps. Learning to play the guitar? You’re not going to be able to play a full song tomorrow. Focus on learning a chord. Working on pulling up those grades? They won’t jump from C to A overnight. Dedicate an extra hour of studying the material with your daughter in a way that she can best comprehend.
Praise the process, and be resilient in achieving those goals.Remind yourself, and your daughter, that every small step forward IS progress, even though it might not seem like it in the moment. Don’t get deterred because you can’t achieve success in hitting your goals overnight. As long as you keep taking small action steps, you’re on the right track.
Here’s to a year of actually checking all the boxes on those New Year’s Resolutions!
