7 Steps to Realize Your New Year’s Resolutions in 2025

Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions, hoping to spark positive change. The recurring themes each year include a more active approach to health and fitness, improved finances, and learning new things for personal and professional development. 

Making resolutions, or goal setting, is like having your own personal cheerleader, rooting for you to succeed! When you set goals, you're making a promise to yourself and your dreams. It's all about being accountable and taking ownership of your actions. With goals in place, you create a structure that keeps you on track and motivated. 

Deadlines and milestones become your trusty sidekicks, reminding you to stay focused and disciplined. By sticking to your plan and putting in the effort day in and day out, you develop habits that pave the way for your growth and success, whether it's in your career or personal life. 

Despite the best of intentions, once the glow of a fresh new year wears off, many people struggle to make good on their plans. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 46% of people who made New Year’s resolutions were successful. That means over half of the people who set a goal for the new year will fail! 

Naturally, we don’t want to be in the camp of folks who fail to achieve their aspirations and dreams for 2024, so we’ve put together an exhaustive plan for following through on your resolution. 

If you want to realize your New Year’s resolution this year, follow these 7 steps: 

1. Mentally prepare for change 

Changing ingrained habits is no easy task, so before diving head-first into your New Year goals, it is important to take a step back and get ready for that impending change. 

The first breakthrough in change is taking a personal inventory. Being that it’s the end of one year and the beginning of the next, it’s perfect timing to take stock of the past year’s accomplishments. Think about the following: 

1. What did I set out to do in the past year? 

2. Where did I make progress? 

3. Where didn’t I see progress? 

Naturally, your resolution may focus on areas that lack progress, but don’t forget to savor the progress made and find some small way to celebrate. Those happy feelings are useful! If possible, try to associate them with an object or word related to your accomplishment. 

You will want to keep upbeat with your new resolution, so you can use that positive association with last year’s accomplishments to remind you of those good feelings when you are feeling challenged. 

As you start thinking about the changes you want to implement, make sure to do the following: 

• Stay positive 

• Try not to make big/quick changes 

• Change should be gradual 

• Build on smaller changes 

• Allow a little room for error 

2. Set a goal that motivates you 

You would be surprised how often people set goals that are not for themselves. These goals could be dictated to or coerced by a manager, spouse, or parental / peer pressure. 

While it’s nice to have some external support, if you don’t share the same passion, the resolution has a small chance of succeeding and could even be dead on arrival. 

To do this, you need to make sure the goal you set is important to you and only you and that there is value or benefit for you in achieving the goal. It is these two things that will provide the reason and willingness to take action. This is also known as motivation! 

Thus, it’s a safe bet if your resolutions align with the following: 

• Your goals 

• Your priorities 

• Your dreams 

• Your aspirations 

Not only should you align around your innermost desires, but you should also make sure the resolutions align with your top priorities. This will lead to a “must do” attitude. 

If your goals are career-centric creating your own professional development plan is a great way to stay motivated on the path toward your goal. 

3. Limit resolutions to a manageable amount 

A common mistake in resolution-setting is having too many and spreading yourself too thin. We all want to learn 25 different languages, 15 new job skills, and eliminate 5 bad habits, but we are not superheroes. We only have so much attention span we can dedicate to self-improvement, so having too many resolutions is a great way not to achieve the many goals you have set out for yourself. 

Thus, you should make a short list of resolutions that you can manage in the upcoming year. Knowing that short list of priorities is the hard part. The key here is understanding how to prioritize. 

Here is an exercise that you can undertake to help you figure out what is most important in your life. All you need is a post-it pad, a pen, and a wall. 

1. Write anything you want to accomplish for self-improvement purposes on a post-it 

2. Each post-it only gets one discreet tactic 

3. Place each post-it on the wall 

4. Go crazy - use as many post-its as possible 

5. Group together similar post-its 

6. Place the topics you feel strongly about at the top of the wall 

7. Put the topics you feel “meh” about on the bottom 

8. Spend a lot of time thinking about the order of the first 3-5 post-it (groups) 

As you might suspect, #8 is the most time-consuming because it will determine what resolutions you are going to take on this year. 

The final piece of the puzzle here is knowing your limitations and personal bandwidth. With that in mind, you should focus on your top priorities while balancing how much attention you can honestly devote to a resolution. 

Final thought: It’s better to tackle one resolution well than multiple resolutions poorly. 

4. Be specific 

When it comes to setting resolutions, it’s easy to set bad goals that could lead to poor follow-through. Fortunately, the SMART goal-setting framework can help you craft better goals. 

SMART goals are: 

• Specific - Articulate the resolution as clearly as possible. For example, quitting smoking is better than being healthy. While “being healthy” is great, the wording can be interpreted in many ways.   

• Measurable - Quantify your resolution if possible, i.e., I will lose 10% of my body weight. 

• Attainable - Choose a goal within the realm of possibility yet challenging. Making 100 friends this year would be amazing but probably pretty hard to do. On the other, making 10 new friends is doable. 

• Relevant - Keep it relevant to your priorities and goals. See the motivation section above! 

• Time-sensitive - Give yourself a time frame in which to achieve a goal. A deadline will instill some urgency and provide a time when you can celebrate your success. 

Bottom of Form 

5. Break up big goals into smaller goals 

A lot of us tend to be over-eager and grandiose when it comes to resolutions. We have the best of intentions and may accidentally take on a goal that is too big to achieve. Thus, it’s helpful to divide a big goal into smaller goals that are more achievable. 

Now chunking up a big goal is easier said than done. Here are a few tips to help you make your massive goal more achievable: 

• Create a list of sub-tasks 

• Prioritize and order them 

• Use a visual map to display 

• Assign milestones to each task 

• Decide how much time each task requires 

• Allocate resources accordingly 

• Focus on the next step, not the big goal 

 

6. Review your resolution regularly 

Let’s face it, if you are not thinking about your resolution regularly, you are not going to follow through. Thus, a crucial part of realizing your goal is a regular review. 

At a minimum, this review should be monthly, but the more frequent, the better. 

Here’s one way to build goal review into your routine. 

1. Schedule a monthly “big picture” review during the first week of each month. This will serve as a planning meeting where you distribute smaller tasks and goals to different weeks throughout the month. 

2. Do a weekly check-in to check progress on the monthly goal. 

3. Set a daily reminder for smaller resolution tasks. 

It may seem a little crazy to think about your resolution every single day, but it is those smaller incremental steps that lead to massive changes over the course of a single year. 

7. If you fall off track, get back on quick 

Rome was not built in a day. 

We’ve established it will take time for your resolution to become a reality, and we know change is difficult. In fact, we’ve already established we should leave some room for mistakes and setbacks. 

Keep the following ideas in mind: 

• Skipping an intermediate task is not a complete failure 

• Missing a goal by 10% or even 80% is not a complete failure 

• Finishing a task late is not a complete failure 

• A moment of weakness is meaningless in the grand scheme of things 

Setbacks can happen, but so long as they are handled correctly, they will not impact the big goal. The key is to avoid a defeatist attitude at all costs, i.e., “Well, I screwed up once, why should I even try to do this anymore.” 

And if there is a setback, it’s important to understand what led to that moment and how you can avoid a similar situation in the future, i.e., "If I play video games after work, I will not go to the gym. Don’t play video games after work!" 

Once a mistake is made, own it and move on to the next thing. For example, if you skipped a study session, make it up tomorrow, and keep on moving. A few small mistakes shouldn’t spoil your resolution for the year! 

Remember, you can’t keep your New Year’s resolutions without persistence. The journey toward improvement is not a sprint but a marathon, and with the right mindset and preparation, you can turn your resolutions into permanent habits. Your chance of success will skyrocket if you can successfully turn your resolutions into lasting habits. Embrace the opportunity for growth. Let’s be different this year.