Want to meet your goals this year? Start setting definite ones - Guest Post by Amie Gibbons

It's my pleasure to welcome author Amie Gibbons to my blog today. She has some great tips on how you can rock your goals this year. Take it away, Amie!

Want to meet your goals this year? Start setting definite ones.

Hey, how are those New Year’s Resolutions going?

No, I’m not trying to bait you or make you feel terrible about yourself, I’m trying to make a point.  If you set goals, do you stick to them? I’m here to give you some tips on how to stick to your goals, basically by sharing what works for me.  If your way works, stick to it, you’re obviously doing something right  If it hasn’t been, try these tips and see what happens.

1. Set definite goals
2. Start small and build up
3. Know why you’re setting the goals
4. Reward yourself when you hit a milestone

Yep, that’s it.  Why set definite goals?  Well, let me ask you something.  If your goal is to lose 40 pounds in a year, what are you action steps to do that?  How do you know if you met what you need to for the day to make that goal happen? 

Exactly.  And how do you know that 40 pounds is healthy for you to lose?  Instead of the vague, I’ll lose 40 pounds, how about something more concrete? Something you can look at every day and say if you’ve met it or not?  You’ll be able to feel good because you met your goal, keep track of your progress so you can see yourself accomplishing instead of the general, well, I should’ve lost 3.33 pounds this month and I haven’t lost 1 yet, so I’m doing something wrong.

Instead, try I’ll walk 10 minutes every day for January and I’ll do 10 push ups and a set of 20 crunches every day, and I’ll limit my soda intake to 1 can a day.  It’s small, but it is definite and it’s a start.  Once you get yourself to that little goal every day, carving out time and energy for that tiny bit, then you can increase your goals.  I’ll walk 20 minutes, only 2 sodas a week, ect…

You get the idea?  So here are some suggestions:

If you’re a writer, don’t say I’ll finish that novel this year, say, I’ll write 1000 words a day and once the book’s done, I’ll edit for 1 hour a day for 3 months, and then I’ll reevaluate and increase that.

If you want to learn how to cook, don’t say you’ll learn, get a cookbook or scour the internet and say I’ll do a new recipe a week for the first 3 months, then up it to 2 a week.

If you want to lose weight, start setting some definite and realistic goals, like above, and build it up once the habit is set.

Why should you know why you’re doing this?  Because keeping your goals isn’t always easy, if it were, we’d all do it.  Losing that weight?  It’s going to be hard work and you’re not going to get to eat like you used to.  But if you’re doing it because your heart’s in trouble, you have diabetes, or hell, you just want to look sexy again dammit, then keep that in mind.

And reward yourself.  You’ll be putting in hard work, give yourself something for it.  You meet your workout goals all week?  Reward yourself with a soak in the tub, a night out, maybe an extra treat (though that may create the mindset of junk food good and is a reward, which you probably need to get rid of if you want to lose weight so it depends on if this works with the way you think about food.)

I hope this helps.  Set your goals, just try one for a month, see what happens.  

And here’s an oh so subtle push of my new book, Psychic Undercover (with the Undead), https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N4OCJE5/.

*Vampires aren't the only things that go bump in the night...

Singers are a dime a dozen in Nashville, so despite her mama's urging, psychic Ariana Ryder's working her way towards a career in law enforcement at the FBI, one tray of fetched coffee at a time, instead. She's got an extremely handsome boss, a dancing partner among the lab techs, and a solid year as the team rookie under her belt...

Right until the director gives her a big break, working undercover as a singer at a club to investigate why it's being targeted by a serial killer. This might have worked better if the club didn’t happen to be a vampire nest.

Now, with the vampire's investigator, Quil, on her case, the jurisdictional battle isn't the only thing heating up as they race to solve the case before the killer strikes again!*