Top three tips for finally achieving your New Year’s resolutions

ROCKWALL, TX (Dec. 31, 2014) Here we go again…New Year’s resolution time! The standard lose 10 pounds, get healthier, and spend more family time seem to automatically go on the list year after year.

Why is it that we keep making the same goals year after year, but don’t ever cross them off? How long until each of us fail? Do we set the bar too high, or do we just not know how to get from point A to point B?

Here are three tips that may help:

TIP 1: Be a realist – not an idealist – when setting your goals. If you set your goal so far out of reach, you will get frustrated and fail by mid January. You can always achieve your goal and then set a new goal. Also, set no more than five goals each year. This is the most important of the three tips; it is where many of us fail before we begin because we choose too many goals and make them too difficult.

TIP 2: Write down your goals for the year each and every day. Yes, I said it…write your goals down every single day. Buy a notebook and write on the cover 2015 Goals. It is amazing how keeping your goals at the forefront of your mind can help you stay focused and move closer and closer to achieving those goals.

TIP 3: Get an accountability partner. Do not pick your BFF or your spouse – unless you are willing to lose them! Find a reliable person that you respect and slightly fear (kidding…or am I?) You need to be vulnerable with this person and share your goals with them and then allow them to call, email, text or show up to check on you and your progress. This is why I say don’t pick someone you really love a lot because a good accountability partner may upset you at times if you are getting off track. Knowing that someone is going to check in on you has a bigger effect than you might think, so give it a try this year.

I have struggled over the years with my personal New Year’s resolutions, but I have learned the hard way that I need to make goals that are just slightly out of reach; take five minutes each day to write down my goals; and most importantly, to be vulnerable and lean on my accountability partner during low periods. I’m proud to say that in 2014 I will have accomplished all five of my goals by using these three simple tips.

One last thought on reaching your goals: never give up. Growing up I was not allowed to quit. My dad would say to me, “I’m not raising a quitter!” when things got hard or I just didn’t like soccer anymore (too much running)! To this day when I think about quitting or giving up on something, I immediately go back to how I was raised – and I refuse to quit. I encourage you all to have that same mentality. Just watch what you can achieve this coming year!

By Stacy Lynn Massar, Rockwall mom and Realtor. Read her “Not So Southern Stacy” guest column at BlueRibbonNews.com.

To share your good news and events, email .

Please click here to LIKE our Facebook page, so we can reach more people with good news like this!