Thinking about starting something new? A new year, a new start.

Sounds great but how do you follow it through?  Why is it that some people make a New Years resolution and achieve it whereas others have exactly the same goal but it seems like a distant memory by February?

Maybe you want to get fit, lose weight, do some voluntary work, meet someone new, take up photography. Whatever your New Years resolution is, you need to start it and keep it going. But how do you start, let alone succeed with it?

Perhaps you’re feeling over-whelmed at the thought of starting something new. You’re anxious, confused, you lack self-belief.  These feelings can often stop people from turning their good intentions into reality.

If you want to make a positive beginning to the New Year, here’s a simple way to start and keep going!

Imagine a hurdle track. Right at the end is the finishing line. On this line is your goal, your New Years resolution.

Between the start and finishing line there are a serious of hurdles on the track. Now imagine that each hurdle represents a step you’re going to take to achieve your goal. Each step you take is a challenge on your journey.

Every time you take a step, you complete a challenge. Completing a challenge will make you feel good about yourself. You will probably want to carry on. These steps or hurdles don’t have to be huge. In fact they shouldn’t be huge. After all, why make life difficult for yourself. Each hurdle should be achievable and manageable but big enough to make you feel good about the experience.

It all sounds so simple but in reality some people are able to get to the end of the hurdle track while others fall and don’t manage to reach their goal. Why is that?

The people who get to the end and achieve their goal are the ones who plan out what the track will look like. They don’t just look at the end and think….that’s where I want to be. They make a plan of how they are going to get there. They write down the series of steps they’ll need to take. They understand that some of these steps will be harder than others but they have a clear structure in their head. They make a plan which they know is achievable over a set period of time.

This is a great way to start your New Year. Make a plan. Know when you will start, when you will finish and what you need to do in between to get there.

That way, when you look down your track you will see a series of little hurdles in front of you and you’ll know which steps you’ll need to take to get to the end.

It wouldn’t be unusual for one of your hurdles to wobble or even fall over when you jump it. See this as a minor setback. Accept that this step didn’t go quite as you planned. Don’t let this stop you though. It would be easy at this point to lose self-belief and even give up. But you need to keep the momentum going. You need to jump all the hurdles to reach your goal.

So, if you stop how are you going to get going again?

First of all, you need to look at why you stopped. Was the step or hurdle too big? Do you need to take smaller steps?. Or maybe you’ve reached a point when you can jump bigger hurdles because you found the last one too easy!

The important thing is to look at why your momentum waivered, reflect on it, make the necessary changes then look forward and move on again. Never lose sight of your ultimate goal. Know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

Give yourself small, daily achievable goals.

This is a great way to build your self-confidence and self-esteem as well as ensure your New Years resolution stays intact.