Have you broken your New Year’s Resolutions?

Have you broken your New Year’s Resolutions? It turns out 25 percent of all New Year’s Resolutions are broken within the first week and over half are broken within 6 months.

New Year’s Resolutions are a way to make us reflect on what we want to change in our lives. At Paws for Reflection, we certainly have some issues we want to tackle in 2017, but we took a new twist this year, one that will help us stay on track and not be doomed to failure.

Setting goals with deadlines gets concrete results

We have set goals with deadlines, hoping this will make us stick to our guns and get concrete results.

The cats, including Lenny, wish for good health and happiness for their New Year’s Resolutions.For the felines, it’s all about health and happiness. We want good health and prosperity for our human, as well. We know we’re going to have challenges as our Pink Collar has progressive arthritis and Clyde’s health is deteriorating as he is over 19 years of age. Just like with humans, age takes a toll on the cats. We know we would be remiss if we did not write about this journey, and share our story to help others who may be dealing with the same issues.

Have you broken your New Year’s Resolutions? Goals keep focus

For their human, we are using 2017 New Year’s Resolutions to succeed, not to fail, and we tuned to Michael Hyatt’s online webinar, ‘7 Steps for Taking Control of 2017’ for some help. He says you’ll only achieve what you intentionally pursue, so if you want to make it happen, you’ve got to clarify your priorities, and make them realistic. He suggest making 7 to 10 priorities as that is all that is realistic.

Most common broken New Year’s Resolutions

In doing some online research for this blog post, we find some of the most commonly broken resolutions are as follows:

• Lose Weight and Get Fit
• Quit Smoking
• Learn Something New
• Eat Healthier and Diet
• Get Out of Debt and Save Money
• Spend More Time with Family
• Travel to New Places
• Be Less Stressed
• Volunteer
• Drink Less

Weight, exercise & cats top Paws list for 2017

Our human, certainly has weigh loss and exercise under the heading of heath. Without good health, we can’t do the things we want to do:

• Spending more time volunteering in cat rescue,
• Blog on a consistent basis
• Write a book
• Build a strong social media following.
• Meeting more Cat Centric people
• Learning a whole lot more about our favorite topic: cats

As we’ve never smoked (thank goodness) and spent a lot of time learning new things through our blogging journey, we can easily cross those off the list.

You’re 42 more likely to achieve your goals by writing them down

While we know how important it is to write down your goals, Michael Hyatt’s webinar pointed out just how important it is.

• You are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals, just by writing them down.
• Your goals must be specific, actionable, measurable and have a deadline.

However, we should set goals that are achievable and not unrealistic. We also need to set goals that matter to us, something we really want to achieve. If we scatter our focus in many directions, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Deadlines are key to success

Deadlines are key to success. Breaking projects down into bite-sized pieces is paramount. Paws wants to triple our social media numbers, but we are looking at getting there 100 followers at a time. Then, we move on to the next 100. By doing this, we are not only creating momentum, we are creating achievable goals. By putting our begin numbers on the calendar on Sunday, we can track how we are doing each week. It will help us stay focused and track our progress.

We are going to do the same with weight and exercise. We’re also going to write down what we consume every day to keep us honest. Every Sunday our weigh-in goes on the calendar. We’ll also put an E on every day we exercise for at least 30 minutes.

Our third goal section for 2017 is blogging and writing. We are setting out some must posts, and then filling in the blanks for more consistent writing and blogging. We know Paws for Reflection has some great posts. Our 2016 content does not really reflect the amount of behind the scenes work that has gone into Paws. We’ve spent a lot of time developing our focus, working on enhanced security and more. We know a lot more about blogging than we did in January of 2016.

Setting goals with deadlines

By setting goals with deadlines, we don’t have to worry that we got off to a slow start in 2017. We’re not worried about what we did last week because we’re changing a lot of things around this week, including a different work schedule. It’s the perfect time to keep those goals right in front of our nose, by putting them, front and center on the refrigerator door. That way they won’t be out of sight and out of mind. They be front and center, keeping us focused and accountable.

Have you broken your New Year’s Resolutions? Or did you set realistic goals for 2017? Do you set deadlines? How are your cats involved in helping you keep your New Year’s Resolutions. For me, if I’m healthy, I can do more to keep my cats healthy and happy all year-long. Please weigh in and share your thoughts.