New Year, New M…Welp Nevermind.

End of Year Assessment. Say it with me...ACCOUNTABILITY!

Every year around this time resolutions, goals, and personal changes take over my mind and spirit.
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Then six months into the New Year, old habits creeps in. Those New Year declarations become a distant memory and/or an “I’ll do it next year” task. How can one be so pumped for making a change for the New Year then allow time to pass by with no real work towards the goals?

Don’t get me wrong I’ve accomplished goals set but the personal changes have been hard for me to stick to. So how does one make a change for the upcoming year and commit to it!?!

I’ve done the vision boards, the list of goals, but that’s only half of the work. For me that was the easy part. One thing I had to do was seriously hold myself accountable for the changes that were not made in previous years.
Of course life happens and some goals had to roll over or be placed on a lower priority temporarily. But, mostly, I was in my own way and don’t even realize it.

Creating excuses and/or procrastinating were my biggies. It only takes one time to skip that yoga session or nightly routine of writing. A day turns into a week...a week turns into a month. You know the rest. My habits or lack thereof creating good habits, gave me a one way ticket to lost resolutions.
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I had no one to blame but myself.

Also in my personal assessment, I found where I gave up too quickly, allowed that one rejection to change the goal, or I didn’t take the necessary small steps in between time. Rejection is part of any process. Yea yea yea we’ve heard that before. When you’re dealing with it, it’s the LAST thing you want to hear. Instead of turning that rejection into a blessing/lesson to learn from, I allowed the negative emotions to fester. This festering was a full-blown pity party and while I had the desire to move forward to reach goals, the party of pity was way more comfortable than trying again.

Here comes the REAL change.
Making small changes to fit our lifestyles to our goals for the New Year is a great way to start in sticking to your goals for the New Year, throughout that New Year. It’s easy to fall back into our old routine because that’s where the comfort lies. Slowly moving out of that zone will help in creating a change that lasts.

What small changes can I make daily to push me towards what I want to accomplish this year? In my list of goals, I started listing the small steps/changes I could make to achieve them. This helped in getting me on an organized path versus having the goal and no direction; making it easy to slip back into old habits.

Yes we make the goals but what about the steps in achieving them. We tend to forget about this important element because this is where you will find the discipline and endurance to maintain the tenacity to stick it out when things tend to go south throughout the year.

So the advice I’m giving to you (AND to myself), list the goals AND make note of the steps you can take to keep you on the right track.

The Blakk Dahlia (E. Alexcina Brown) is a New York City author/blogger from Macon, GA. Recently, she released the book series, the Heartbreak Diaries outlining different perspectives of heartbreak. The Dahlia Diaries is a lifestyle blog penned by The Blakk Dahlia, sharing her story in NYC along with life lessons and tips she's learned in her journey.