Every year we tend to make the same New Year’s Resolutions, we also have a tendency to break these resolutions in as little as 4-6 weeks. So, there must be an easier way to see your 2020 goals through this year? A way in which you can stick to and achieve them!?

We think the secret to achieving your desires is to reverse the whole system.

So, rather than forward planning your goals, we believe you should write yourself a letter from your future self. Looking at your wishes from the other side, as if you have already achieved them, and how it felt to do so. This way, your goals strongly embed within your brain and make you more likely to stick to your plan!

A new take on new years’ resolutions

There are many reasons why resolutions don’t work, but let’s have a quick look at some of the main reasons as to why we don’t stick to our guns.

1. It’s the wrong time to set goals

Post-Christmas and New Year you are tired and burnt out, not the best time to make big changes

2. They aren’t enjoyable

We need to ignite the reward centre in our brain to stick to our goals, most resolutions do not do this

3. They don’t align with you personally

Which means you won’t be motivated or driven to see it through

4. Leaving room for negotiation

Not using the correct language with yourself, such as ‘might’ or ‘should’ allows wiggle room for whether you will or won’t do something

5. They’re too difficult

Setting unrealistic goals will demotivate you

These are just a few of the reasons too, there’s so much going on within our skulls that prevents us from making positive changes in our lives and see through our 2020 goals.

You can rest assured that you are not alone in your New-Years-Resolution-Failures. We are hard wired into our routine and habits. Various studies have prompted many different answers as to how long it takes to create or break a habit. For a long time, people believed for both it was around 21 days.

However, in reality and many studies later, it seems it is much longer. With it taking approximately 90 days to break a habit and 66 days to create a new one.

So, you don’t need to beat yourself up when you find yourself struggling. Our psychology is literally working against us.

80% of us will fail by week 2 in February. This year it might be worth implementing new strategies to help you achieve those 2020 goals!

• Choose small attainable goals
• This will ignite the pleasure receptors in the brain upon accomplishment, this rush of achievement will inspire you to go further
• 1 step at a time
• Once you have achieved a small step, keep going for the next, and the next. But don’t overthink it. Enjoy each small accomplishment
• Support
• Find support amongst your family or friends, or even online. Chances are there will be many people attaining to the same goals
• Be forgiving
• A small step back doesn’t mean you have to throw the towel in, keep on going and allow yourself room for time out. Learn to rest rather than quitting

It does beg the question – Why are we so addicted to self-improvement?

Do we do it for ego? Or for the challenge? Or, simply to feel good? Likely, it is for all these reasons and the deep workings of our brain need us to continuously move forward and improve.

What are the most popular resolutions to date?

1. Exercise
2. Lose weight
3. Be more organised
4. Learn a new skill
5. Live life fully
6. Save your hard-earned money
7. Quit smoking
8. Spend more time with family and friends
9. Travel
10. Read more

You can see more on resolutions here.

Does any of this look familiar? Maybe you’re readying yourself to tackle one or more of these in 2020. If you are, we have some brilliant ways to help yourself stick to your 2020 goals!

How to write yourself a letter

What this is all geared towards is a new way of looking at your yearly goals. We can write down a list of what we want to do, but at the end of the day these are just words on a page. Often, being out of reach, disconnected and demotivating.

The idea of writing yourself a letter from your future self is that you can really feel your achievements. You’re looking at them as if you have already achieved them. You can feel it and look beyond the simplicity of ‘I will lose weight’ or ‘I will save more money’.

Life is messier than this, there are pit falls along the way. You can imagine this when you write a letter, preparing yourself for inevitable fails, and how you pick yourself back up again and keep on going to achieve your 2020 goals!

So, with that said, here are our tips for writing your letter;

1. Keep it breezy

This is for you and only you, inject some humour, and keep it light. Don’t talk down to yourself or put on too much pressure.

2. Think about yourself

It could be a good place to start by listing out facts about yourself right now. Then you could write down a list of what scares you about your future. These aren’t things we entertain in our daily lives. By opening your eyes to who you are, can help to set more tangible goals.

3. What did you achieve in 2019?

Your final list before getting stuck in. It’s good to start from a place of excitement and positivity. It is highly likely your list of what you did in 2019 will surprise you and make you feel great about yourself. Things to include;

Countries/places travelled to

Academic achievements

Work advancements or changes

Activities you did

People you spent time with

Kindness and help you have extended to others

Anything else you are particularly proud of

4. Include where you went wrong

When writing your letter, go ahead and include your failures. Because, it’s real! There is no way you will go 12 months without slipping up and eating cake. Or spending a little too much money on something you probably didn’t need. It just isn’t realistic, so put that in, and have a laugh about it

5. Small steps

Break down your accomplishments, it isn’t much use saying that you achieved everything straight away. Again, we’re trying to keep this as realistic as possible. To be something you can see and feel. Visualise your journey and include a break down of how you foresee your little steps adding up to one great accomplishment

This should be plenty to go off. Are you still a little unsure of how to get going? Here is an example of a letter to get you started for addressing your 2020 goals.

A letter from 2021 Joe for 2020 Joe

Just like last year, you have surprised yourself with just how far you have come in 1 short year. What you have managed to achieve and the goals you have accomplished.

Of course, it wasn’t easy, you certainly had some tantrums and fall outs along the way. You entered 2020 with a sort of calm determination to better your health and save some money for once! You knew this year would be different. It was slow going to begin with, and after some false starts you managed to get into a steady rhythm with attending HIIT classes at the gym. You did go through a stint in June where you stopped going as you were so busy, but you got yourself back into the gym by the end of the month!

You feel confident and good about what you have done, and how exercise is now a part of who you are and your weekly routine…

This is just a start for you. You can dress it up however you see fit. Once you have written it, pop it away somewhere safe, where you can pull it out in a years’ time to reflect on what you did and how you surprised yourself!

Why writing a letter will make you stick to your guns

This is a tactic unlike any other. It makes you properly evaluate how you operate and accept your downfalls.

It is also great as rather than looking at your goals as a giant mountain to climb, you look at your goals from the top of the mountain as you simply enjoy the view.

To visualise your goals as no longer goals, but instead as achievements allows us to see them in a positive light that we know we can do!

Other easy ways to make achieving your 2020 goals easier;

1. Break it down

Start small and rather than tell yourself you’ll get out of debt in a few months. Just say you’ll open a savings account in January, and deposit £20. Then once you have done that, say in Feb you will read up on some saving techniques online. By March you’ll have decided how to sort your finances. You get the idea. Just simplify it, make it one small hill to climb rather than making it your Everest.

2. Rewards

This is a big one, rewarding yourself will make you much more likely to stick to any goal. So, if your goal is to learn a new language. Every time you learn 10 new words or a new phrase, treat yourself. With a nice bubble bath. Or by buying your favourite bottle of wine.

3. Don’t eliminate bad habits

We want to replace them. So, if you wish to eat less crisps, rather than going cold turkey, buy yourself some houmous and crackers or celery and peanut butter (your healthy replacement!). Or you can apply this to any goal you may have.

4. Be realistic

This does feed into a previous step, but don’t over expect, running 10kms a day from nothing simply won’t happen. Go lightly on yourself.

Manifest your dreams

We’re becoming a world that is obsessed with manifesting, journaling, meditation, green juice and reiki. There is good reason for it too. Plus, it isn’t just for ‘tree huggers’, you’ll see some of the most successful CEO’s in the world getting on board with this way of living.

So, before anyone sneers at the simple word ‘manifest’, let’s check out what this means.

First, to manifest your dreams you will need to remove any resistance in your mind. This usually comes in the form of past thoughts or poor self-talk. Which is a whole other ball game, we couldn’t even begin to cover the necessities in this blog post. But we highly recommend checking out some excellent sites online such as;

Trello ‘The Self-Talk Struggle is Real’

Very Well Mind – ‘The Toxic Effects of Negative Self Talk’

In simple laymen’s terms, try to accept your life as it currently is. Rather than ‘wanting more’ or ‘lacking’. Try to accept yourself and your life exactly as it is.

You know your destination or goals; we have even written the letter. Now to further embed this into our brains we need to act deliberately. To weave it into our daily lives and make it a part of who we are. How can you do that?

• Talk about it
• Join online groups
• Spend time thinking about it
• Visualise
• Use self-affirmation
• Feel positive!

Start going through your life as if you’ve already achieved your 2020 goals, like you are exactly where you need to be. It’s like when you smile, you trick your brain into feeling happier. Or, if you stand tall, you feel more confident.

Trick yourself into being exactly what you want to be. The power of persuasion is quite amazing, even when we’re working it on ourselves.

Get your letter back out

12 months have passed, and you can pull me back out, and see what has happened and how far you have come.

Chances are so much will have happened for the greater good you could never have envisioned or dreamed of. That is what makes life so incredible.

You will see you probably didn’t achieve everything you set out to do, life has a way of steering us off track, quite often for the greater good. However, there will be goals you completely smashed and new ones you achieved but didn’t expect to.

When you have had a good chuckle at what you have and haven’t done. Write yourself an opposing letter. Run through your achievements and how the year really did play out. There are high chances you prefer the messy real version of tales, to your perfected masterpiece. After all, this is what got us to where we are right now.

Happy new year

All we can do now, is wish each other a big Happy New Year, and go into the year with clear, calm intention.

We have all got this, go ahead and smash your 2020 goals!

Have a great and prosperous new year!

Perhaps you new year resolution is to find yourself a new career or a better position. Which is something we can help you with! Head to our current job vacancies to see what we currently have going. Head to the jobs section of our website.

If you see anything that ignites your interest, call us on 01623 656 303 or email recruit@turnerfox.co.uk.

Happy New Year from all of us at TurnerFox Recruitment!