25 Common New Year’s Resolutions (and How to Make Your Own)

It’s that time of year again. We set our New Year’s resolutions — goals we may or may not actually intend to keep more than a week or so into the New Year. It never hurts to try though. Setting goals is often the first step towards making significant changes to improve our lives and our businesses.

Today we’ll take a look at 25 examples of common New Year’s resolutions that might spark some ideas for goals of your own. Then we’ll share some tips on creating your very own resolutions for the coming year.

25 Common New Year’s Resolutions

Health and Fitness

• Lose weight.
• Join a gym.
• Give up fast food (or sugar or chocolate or some other specific food)
• Give up, or cut back on, alcohol
• Stop smoking

Work and Money

• Start a business.
• Ask for a raise.
• Get a new job.
• Get out of debt.
• Start or increase savings (for something specific or just in general)

Home and Organization

• Clean out your closets.
• Clean out your garage.
• Get organized in general (maybe your whole home or even your office).
• Organize your finances and other important records and files.
• Go green around the home.

Family and Social

• Spend more time at home with the family.
• See friends more often, or just keep in touch a bit better.
• Volunteer to support a cause that matters to you.
• Visit more distant family you don’t see often.
• Reconnect with old friends you haven’t talked to in years.

Self-Improvement / Personal Interests

• Learn something new (related to a hobby, passion, or career perhaps).
• Go back to school.
• Decrease your stress levels.
• Increase your confidence.
• Take a trip you’ve always wanted to take.

How to Set Your Own Goals and Resolutions

Here are a few tips to help you set achievable goals and resolutions for the New Year.

1. Try not to choose more than one or two big goals.

Too many might overwhelm you quickly and stop you from achieving any of them. You can always set other goals when you reach the first ones.

2. Make a list of all of the problems and opportunities you can think of in your life.

For example, maybe you have high blood pressure and your doctor told you losing weight might help manage it and improve your health without drugs. That’s a problem you can address with a resolution of losing weight. Or maybe you know your boss will be leaving the company late in the New Year and you want to be promoted to that position. There’s an opportunity. You might set goals to take some courses or improve your confidence or even just make your interest known to other superiors so they don’t look you over.

3. Rank your ideas to narrow down options.

Of all the problems, opportunities, and resulting resolution ideas you listed which are most important to you? Or sort them into groups — big goals together so you can narrow it down to one or two, but also smaller goals you can work on in the meantime (such as quitting your nail-biting habit). Or you can sort by category like we did here — health vs. finances for example, so you can work on things in different areas at the same time.

What are your New Year’s resolutions for the upcoming year? If you haven’t set any yet, now is a good time to think about it. You can improve your life in big ways and small ones alike. The first step is setting that goal and coming up with a plan. You can do it!