15 Reflection Questions for 2023 and 5 Tips for Reaching Your Goals in 2024
For a long time I dismissed the idea of making New Year’s resolutions. It felt too arbitrary and I associated them with goals and habits that inevitably faded by the time spring began. But at the same time I was drawn to the symbolism of a fresh start that the new year brings, a motivated date to start new habits and work towards big goals. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, at the end of 2019 I made it a goal to journal every single day in 2020. Succeeding in that goal hooked me on the idea of setting a few intentional, yet realistic goals for the year.
How I Approach Setting New Year’s Goals
My goal with goal-setting (haha) is to determine specific realistic habits and goals I can create that to live out my values. To decide what goals or habits I want to focus on, I like to journal about some reflections of the past year. Through journaling and reflection time, I identify what big-picture values and priorities I want to focus on in the new year. For example, my top 3 priorities are often my relationships, how I spend my time, and my health. If you’re interested in some guided reflection questions, listed below are some of the questions I have asked myself over the years.
Reflection Questions
This year I am most grateful for…
This year I was happiest when…
I felt most myself this year when…
The people I felt most myself around were…
Things that stressed me out this year were…
Things that made me feel sad/upset this year were…
Moments and people that gave me energy this year were…
This year I felt most alive when…
Something I am proud of this year is…
Something I felt shame/insecurity about this year was…
Ways I can put myself out of my comfort zone to grow next year include…
Things I am excited about in the new year are…
What I want less of in the new year is…
What I want more of in the new year is…
My top 3 priorities in the new year are…
I find it helpful to block enough time in my schedule to work through my reflections and goal-setting without feeling rushed. Make it an event, romanticize it. Light a candle, sip some tea, play some music, etc.
Pick and choose which questions speak to you the most. I find it most satisfying when I enter a stream of consciousness as I write down my answers. Get creative. Let any judgment about yourself go. No one else needs to read what you write. After I answer several questions, I often notice patterns in my answers that help me identify what I want more or less of in the new year and what I want to prioritize.
It’s helpful to brainstorm broad habit ideas that support your big-picture priorites. Then pick 1-2 habits to focus on and turn them into SMART goals.
Creating The Goal
Once you have identified your top 3 big-picture values or priorities for the new year, write down each of the categories with plenty of space on the paper around each of them.
Then, begin brainstorming ideas of habits or goals under each category that will help you live out that value or priority.
You can make a list of ideas under each category or draw arrows around the main values to habits/goals ideas like a mind map (see above).
This helps you identify “the why” behind your goals and habits and helps make them part of your identity.
According to habit expert James Clear in his book Atomic Habits, behavior change is much more likely when the habit is part of your identity and leads to intrinsic motivation.
For example, telling yourself (or someone else), “I’m a musician” is much more effective than saying “I’m trying to play guitar more often”.
As Clear states, “True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity,” (34).
Choose a realistic amount of goals or habits, perhaps 1-2 from each value/priority.
Now that you have brainstormed many ideas, it’s important to narrow down your list.
Trying to change too much at once will make it harder to follow through.
You can always add new goals or habits later in the year once these first ones become part of your routine.
Write down each goal in the format of a SMART goal.
This means it should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and have a Timeframe.
The more specific the better.
Stretch yourself but be flexible and realistic.
For example, if my goal is “I will weightlift 6x per week at the gym for 30-60 mins,” that is probably not realistic for me like it was in college (which was probably too much anyway).
But if I say “I will weightlift 4x per week for at least 20 mins,” that is much more doable and gives me specific numbers to strive for.
In my second example I can do 20 mins of body weight exercise at home and it will still “count” if I’m too busy to get to the gym. Consistency matters.
I will feel the satisfaction of reaching the goal and thus be much less likely to completely give up a new habit because I wasn’t “perfect” enough to go to the gym 6 days a week.
It’s all about small consistent actions rather than “perfect” big ones.
Write down your SMART goals, with specific action verbs, on a piece of paper.
Using a pen and paper activates your brain such that it helps cement what you write down into your nervous system in a way that typing on your phone or computer does not (Huberman, 2023).
5 Tricks to Help Habits Stick
1. Habit Stacking
According to Clear in his book “Atomic Habits”, setting a specific intention or plan of when and where you will act on a habit makes you more likely to actually follow through.
One of the easiest ways to do this is through habit stacking. We all have habits already ingrained in us which can serve as a cue for a new behavior.
For example, “After I press ‘brew’ on my coffee machine every morning, I will stretch while I wait for my coffee”. Or, “After I change into my pajamas, I will meditate for 2 mins”. Or, “While I brush my teeth, I will stand on one leg to improve my balance”.
Habits stacking uses an existing habit as a cue for a new one. Be sure to pair habits in a realistic way and at times of the day you have a greater chance of success.
2. Make It Easy on Yourself
Have you ever seen someone who seems to effortlessly exercise before work at 5am and thought to yourself, “I just don’t have the self-discipline that that takes”?
But perhaps they don’t actually have more self-control, they’re just doing something that they genuinely enjoy. Perhaps it appears effortless because it is effortless for them.
As James Clear states in Atomic Habits, the people we think of as disciplined “are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control,” (92-93).
To highlight the above example, my dad has effortlessly gone to the gym at 5am for as long as I can remember. Because he naturally wakes up early, that is easy for him. On the flip side, that feat would take tremendous willpower for me and would not be a sustainable habit. That doesn’t make me lazy, it just means I need to find the time of day and form of movement that will take less effort for me.
While reaching goals takes determination and I’m not discounting that goals do take some self-discipline, create an environment and structure your time in a way that decreases the amount of willpower it takes to reach your goal or cultivate a habit.
More examples if you’re feeling stuck:
If you want to read more but you keep getting distracted by your phone put your phone in another room and turn off notifications
If you want to save more money, set up an automatic transfer of a set amount to go into a separate savings account
If you want to eat healthier snacks, make your own snack bags you can bring with you instead of being tempted to buy from a vending machine
If you want to stop doomscrolling before bed delete the apps off your phone and/or place a book next to your bed instead
If you’re tempted to buy things you don’t need, unsubscribe from ad emails
If you want to reduce bright or blue light exposure before bed, get light bulbs that automatically turn to red at a set time
If you want to eat more vegetables, don’t hide your veggies in the back of the fridge, place them front and center
Our environment shapes our behavior more than we realize.
Marketing is a great example of this. Go to the store and you’ll notice more expensive versions of items will be at eye level where it’s easy to see, whereas the cheaper version will be placed on very low or very high shelves, which is harder to find.
Use this to your advantage by placing habit cues in obvious places.
However, placing post-it notes around your house as a cue will probably not work because our brain adapts to the environment around us (Huberman, 2023).
In contrast, if you rewrite the note everyday and place it in a new location, this can work as a cue (Huberman, 2023).
In summary: make positive habits easier on yourself and negative habits harder for yourself.
I make eating more vegetables easier on myself by pre-roasting veggies for the week. And I make clean-up easier by using parchment paper.
3. Start with Small Habits
It’s easy to get excited about big goals and it’s also easy to try to do too many new things at once.
To combat feeling overwhelmed by your new habits to the point that it stops you from actually following through, try smaller versions of your habits and work up to more. James Clear calls this the “2-Minute Rule”.
Start your new habit by only doing it for two minutes. Make the beginning part of the habit easy.
More examples to start your brainstorm:
If your goal is to do 20 pushups, start by doing 2 pushups
If you want to eat healthier, instead of completely changing your diet, eat 1 extra vegetable per day
If you want to read a book, instead of reading one chapter every day, start with reading one page per day
If you want to do more yoga, start by changing into comfortable clothes you can do yoga in
If you want to be better about doing the dishes fast, start by washing one pan right after you cook
If you want to do more art, start by getting out your art supplies
This helps you demonstrate to yourself that you can show-up for and keep the promise you made to yourself which makes it easier to continue doing the habit.
Eventually you can scale up the habit to a more challenging version as you are ready.
4. Use the Goldilocks Rule to Reach Peak Motivation
Although we want to make the start of new habits easy, people “experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy, Just right,” (Clear, 231). This is the “Goldilocks Rule” according to Clear.
This means once you’ve mastered the small version of a habit, scale up the habit to be manageably difficult. Novelty is interesting to the human brain.
At the same time, when reaching a big goal, we sometimes need to be comfortable with the seemingly small, tedious, “boring” tasks (Clear, 233-235).
Find ways to push your current abilities when working through tedious tasks.
Strive to reach a flow state, working in the zone, and challenging yourself as you work through tasks to reach a goal.
5. Understand the Relationship Between Dopamine and Anticipation
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is associated with motivation, anticipation, feelings of desire, learning, memory, voluntary movement, and more.
Dopamine is released while you’re experiencing pleasure AND when you anticipate experiencing pleasure. When dopamine is released in anticipation, it increases our motivation to act.
If your reward is reaching your goal, associate the pleasure building up to the reward with the process it takes to reach your goal. Use the dopamine released in anticipation to motivate you to take the “mundane” actions needed to reach your larger goal.
Additionally, humans have more neural circuits involved in desire and cravings compared to liking what we already have (Clear, 108). This is why the buildup to an event is sometimes better than the actual event itself.
To use this information to our advantage in creating habits, we can use Random Intermittent Reward Timing according to neuroscientist Andrew Huberman (2022).
Instead of rewarding yourself every time you do a new habit, try randomly rewarding yourself some of the time. A great example of how powerful this can be is how casinos intermittently reward you for gambling.
To reward yourself for doing difficult habits, flip a coin or roll a dice to determine whether to reward yourself or not. This builds anticipation about whether you will be rewarded and makes you more likely to want to try again.
Don’t Fall for the “Tell the World” Myth
Counterintuitively, when we tell people our goals, we often lose motivation to actually follow-through on them.
This is because we often receive positive feedback from other people when we tell them our goals, causing reward areas of our brains to be activated and motivation areas to be deactivated. Thus, it is less likely that we take action to achieve our goals (Huberman, 2023). Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has nicknamed this the “tell the world” myth.
However, having an accountability contract with one or two other trusted people can support you in reaching your goals. Another person counting on you can be motivating (Clear, 210-211).
Dopamine is released while you’re experiencing pleasure AND when you anticipate experiencing pleasure such as on the path to your destination.
Consider Tracking Your Progress
Tracking your habits and steps towards a goal help us accurately measure whether we are doing what we promised ourselves we would do. It can also be motivating to check-off what we accomplished. The reward of checking-off a habit can help us perform a habit even when we don’t feel like it in the moment. At the same time, it’s crucial not to lose sight of our intrinsic motivation for a goal by becoming obsessed with checking a box. Equally as vital, is to remember that just because you missed one day on your habit tracker does not mean you should give up altogether. A simple way to habit track is by marking on a calendar the days you engage in a habit. There are also many printable templates online and apps you can use if you prefer.
At the risk of soundy cheesy, the path to our goals is usually not linear, and that’s ok.
Setting and reaching goals can be incredibly rewarding, yet don’t forget to give yourself permission to fail sometimes too. Experiment with which tips work for you, I’m certainly not perfect at using all of them! Whether you’re someone who always sets new year’s resolutions or someone who never has, the symbolic fresh start of a new year is a great time to reflect on what you learned about yourself in the past year and to intentionally consider how you want to live out your values in the next year.
What helps you reach your goals or build healthy habits? What gets in the way? What is something you are proud of doing in the past year? What do you want to prioritize in the new year?
Sources:
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Penguin Random House.
Huberman, A. (2023, August 28). Goals toolkit: How to set & achieve your goals [Audio podcast episode]. In Huberman Lab Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrtR12PBKb0
Huberman, A. (2022, October 6). Tools to manage dopamine and improve motivation and drive. Huberman Lab. https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/tools-to-manage-dopamine-and-improve-motivation-and-drive
