New Year’s resolutions sometimes get a bad rap, maybe because they’ve become synonymous with non-fulfillment. 🤷

People may avoid making resolutions for fear that they won’t keep them, or maybe they just seem cliché. But we make commitments and set goals in countless other, important ways in our lives, and creating benchmarks can be an important step toward success.

So, call them whatever you want — resolutions, goals, commitments, endeavors — but why not strive for something? Why not try to improve yourself, your relationships, your life or the lives of those around you?

via GIPHY

To get you in the spirit, we’ve put together four pro tips to help you set goals + keep them (or at least learn from the process). But before you dive in, we wanted to celebrate some #GrowthGoals progress from our readers.

Earlier this month, we asked you to share some of your accomplishments from goals you set for 2018. Here’s your successes:

✅ “Purchased my first house at 23 yrs old” - @corinadelagarza

✅ “Becoming fluent in Italian, doing some big hikes, reading some classics” - @_kayleeholland

✅ “I bought my first mixer, started DJing and MCing, and getting out of my comfort zone.” - @beniflacko

1️⃣: Write down the goals ✍️

There’s neuroscientific evidence showing that writing down goals helps us achieve them.

This Forbes article explains why it works and notes that “vividly describing your goals in written form is strongly associated with goal success, and people who very vividly describe or picture their goals are anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to successfully accomplish their goals than people who don’t.”

When setting goals, be specific, make a plan, and write it down.

This is similar to the above point about describing the goals vividly. Making the goal to “paint more” is too vague. It leaves room for confusion or apathy. Instead, try making the goal to create three new paintings in the next six months. 🎨 Instead of making the goal to “exercise more,” try aiming to do a specific kind of workout a specific amount of times per week or month. 😅

2️⃣: Consider the community

We are all about community-love here, and there’s no better way to improve your mood or get outside your own (crazy?) head than to give back. 🤟

Some small things can be a huge help, too. Giving blood, for example, is a low-risk, high-reward endeavor. It generally takes less than an hour and you could save someone’s life.

Want to see your community from a different perspective? Try going to a part of town you’ve never visited before. As an LALer, have you seen Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture on Florida Southern’s campus? Or how about some of these murals painted by local artists? We’d also like to point out that you may not know that Lakeland has 70+ parks, trails + athletic fields. And in case you haven’t been, we’ve even rounded up a day trip guide to Winter Haven.

Take a class and support a local business. From personal experience, we would recommend karate with Master Jae Choe or joining the growing yoga scene in town.

3️⃣: Consider self-care

Self-care may be a relatively new buzzword, but it’s about so much more than getting a mani-pedi.

Think about what Gandhi said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

You can change the world by changing yourself. That’s easy to overlook or misunderstand. But it’s true. If you’re personally unhappy or unfulfilled, that’s going to show and everyone you’re around may feel it. We may not be able to right all the wrongs in the world, but we can improve ourselves and when we do that, we are better equipped to help others around us.

4️⃣: Strive for progress, not perfection

An important follow-up to the idea of aiming to be your best self — and a lesson that applies to making goals, in general — is to strive for progress, not perfection. 👌

If you put yourself to the task of being your best self and then beat yourself up every time you’re less than perfect, that’s not beneficial, it’s just frustrating. No one is perfect, so remember the endless value of the process.

Don’t get hung up on the idea of failure, just resolve to be better than yesterday or better in the next moment than the last. There’s value in being humbled. And there’s value in “failure.” You don’t improve by being perfect; you grow by making mistakes + trying again.

So, Lakeland, go out and find new hobbies, find new beauty in our community, or find another part of yourself. You can do it. We’re rooting for you. 📣

And let us know how you go about setting and achieving goals. You can respond to this email or join the conversation on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

- The LALtoday team