Every New Year, millions of people decide on new goals for the upcoming year. Lose weight, spend more time with family, get out of debt, learn something new, so many good ideas for improving their lives. Yet very few of these goals are even remembered by March.

Why is that? There’s so much motivation to change our lives for the better in December when we’re taking an account of our lives. Time and time again, we get super motivated, and then soon get distracted and miss what we were aiming for.

It’s because we’re trying to do too much at once.

If you’re not already crossing out goals every day, spending one day to focus on dramatic changes for your life isn’t going to do any help. You need to start smaller, and build from a strong foundation.

The best way for anyone to focus on a big change is with a 30 day challenge with themselves.

Focus on creating a habit you could do every day to get yourself closer to that goal. So, instead of making a huge, vague goal this year (get in shape), make a thirty day challenge with yourself to work out every day for an hour. Don’t try to plan ahead for a year. Working out for an hour every day (at a certain time) is brainless, and guaranteed to work if you’re really motivated.

If you really have problems with getting focused, you can make a 30 day calender to keep posted in your door. Every time you walk into your bedroom to sleep at night, cross off the date if you did your hour of workout. If you didn’t do it, get back out there and do it now, before you get to sleep.

But what if your goals are more intangible? What if you want to do something like get out of debt, and you have no idea where to start?

Start with something small. Make all your meals at home for a month, and begin leveraging your talents into a side business. Just by waking up an hour earlier than you normally do for a month can give you the time to create huge changes in your life.

The best part of a 30 day challenge is that the routines you incorporate become habits. There’s also no big, looming, scary idea hanging over your head about how to make so many changes over an entire year. It’s the slow way to goal accomplishment, and it works. It works well.

So this year, instead of making yet another New Year’s Resolution you’ll never finish, start the New Year with a 30 day challenge instead. Sit down and write out a plan of attack to accomplish your goals for the New Year. Even if you don’t make it the full 30 days, you’ve started down the path of trying to complete your goals. And that’s a great first step.

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