New year, new you… right?

Why not. After all, January is the perfect time to reinvent yourself, whether that’s learning Spanish, changing your job, or losing weight.

Enter new year’s resolutions — the traditional means of goal setting at the start of the year.

However, just as traditionally as setting the goal is the breaking of the goal — usually around the second week of January, when the inspiration of the festive season has dwindled and the promise of a clean slate has passed.

If this describes previous versions of you, fear not.

Today, I offer you three actionable tips on how to keep your resolutions.

These tips have helped my clients and they work, providing you implement them. Please, no mental masturbation here — put these tips into action and they will breed incredible results.

Let’s go…

(If you want to listen to this article as a podcast, you can here!)

#1.  Clarity is key

The first thing you must do is set CLEAR goals.

It’s all well and good to say ‘I want to lose weight’ or ‘I want to get strong’, but what does the end result look like to you?

Unless you have a clear goal in your mind, you won’t move towards it.

Let’s home in on weight loss. What does ‘losing weight’ actually look like?

A) I want to lose weight

B) I want to lose one stone in one month.

Add a measurable metric and a timeframe, and suddenly you have a goal worth achieving!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a specific weight. It could also be: ‘I want to drop a dress size/belt size in one month’. Or ‘I want to fit into my wedding suit in six weeks’.

As long as you can measure it, you are on the right track.

When you have your goal, WRITE IT DOWN.

Your goals are so much easier to manifest when they are written down.

I’m not talking about the Law of Attraction or The Secret. But if you haven’t even taken the small step of writing your goals on paper, why should you move towards them?

By committing your goals to writing, you show yourself that the outcome actually matters.

It also forces you to clarify the outcome you actually want, if you are struggling with the measurable metric I just mentioned.

#2 .  Motivation matters!

When you have that goal clearly written down, the next step is to remind yourself of your motivation.

Why are you doing this?

Why are you trying to lose weight?

To fit into your wedding suit? Or because a recent visit to the doctors has scared you? Or because you want to be a good role model to your kids? Or you want to impress the opposite sex? Or because you want to show your ex-partner what they are missing?

It doesn’t matter how important or trivial. It’s your motivation.

But keep this in mind — even write it down — because:

When you feel like quitting, remember why you started.

That is an essential quote for those January mornings when it’s dark and wet outside. When you have to prise yourself out of a warm bed and into the rain to go to the gym before work, having this motivation clear in your mind will help.

Bring to mind an image of you walking down the aisle in your dress, or your kid’s smiling faces, or your ex-partner’s jealous face when they see you.

This will help you avoid the snooze button.

#3. Commit to five minutes

With goals set and motivation in mind, it’s time to take action.

Let’s stick with our weight loss goal. There is a lot of action you can take to lose weight, but let’s simplify it by saying you will go for a run.

As January drops, you may be brimming with inspiration. You may want to go for a run four days a week for an hour each day. You may even write on your Facebook page how you are planning to change your life.

Great. I mean, four hours of running a week is amazing, especially if you don’t currently exercise. You will lose weight doing this.

However, can you see the issue?

You have set an unrealistic action plan.

Sure, you can probably go from nothing to running five days, and keep this up for a week or two.

But then the inspiring feeling of New Year dies down. Suddenly you miss a day at the gym. Then you miss a second day. Before you know it, you have missed the entire week and you are deleting that Facebook post.

Sound familiar?

Instead, I suggest taking the five-minute approach.

Forget about running for an hour four days a week, and instead commit to just five minutes of running each day.

That’s right — and no, I haven’t gone crazy.

Five minutes may not sound a lot. It’s not. Doing five minutes of running a day really isn’t going to do much for your waistline.

However, regardless of whether you are a busy executive, a single parent, a student (or a mixture of all three!), everybody can commit to five minutes a day.

The beauty of the five-minute approach is that by sticking to this each day, you will build a habit.

You will soon find that you feel uneasy if you miss your five minutes. In fact, you will soon get to a stage where five minutes feels way too short for what you are trying to achieve.

Excellent — this is where you want to be. When this happens, you can increase your time to 10 or 15 minutes.

Whatever happens, commit to at least five minutes a day.

Before you know it, you will have completed a month of running every day, and a habit has been formed.

Now, you can look at segmenting your sessions. Instead of five minutes a day, you may want to start running for 3 x 20 minute sessions a week, allowing you to go further and enjoy more recovery time.

By the middle of the year, you may be doing your original goal of four hour-long sessions a week habitually. Plus, because you stuck to the habit, you will be seeing the results in your weight, fitness and general health.

Isn’t that better than going hell for leather in the first week of the year then giving up?

To recap, whether it’s running, lifting weights, or learning a new language, the way to stick to your goals this new year:

1 .  Set a clear and realistic goal (I want to learn how to speak basic Spanish in three months)

2 .  Know your motivation and keep it in mind (I want to impress that beautiful barista from Madrid)

3 .  Start small and consistently, then build up (I will spend five minutes on a language-learning platform each day)

Whatever your goals, I hope you are able to use these tips to manifest them in 2023 and beyond.

Good luck.