How to Achieve Your Goals in 2025
Jan 02, 2025
With the new year comes an opportunity for a new start; a chance to reach greater heights than you did the year before. It’s an exciting notion, but many people feel wary of it instead of inspired.
Pursuing New Year’s resolutions can become intensely overwhelming for some people. They may have the drive and ambition to chase after their goals, but the pressure they put on themselves always catches up to them, causing them to crumble under the excessive weight. If you relate to that, you might be stuck in rigidity.
Rigidity is the counterfeit of discipline.
Discipline is highly motivated, consistent, and reliable. It’s also compassionate. Discipline pushes us towards growth with vigor, and it also honors the limits of our minds and bodies. When we make a mistake or encounter a set back, discipline doesn’t punish, it takes time to recuperate before it continues on.
Rigidity is also highly motivated, but to a fault. Rigidity has an all-or-nothing perfectionist mindset. It says, You’re either succeeding or you're failing and if you’re failing, you might as well just quit. It pushes for a flawless performance and leaves no room for error. Rigidity is great at getting things rolling, but it starts off sprinting and expects to maintain that breakneck speed for the rest of the foreseeable future. It’s not sustainable.
How to Let Go of Rigidity
Rigidity attempts to hold us to the standard of the end results it wants. It expects drastic change immediately, which we all know isn’t possible. Growth happens gradually. Therefore, in order to grow, we have to start small.
James Clear expresses the same sentiment in his book Atomic Habits. He says that the most effective way to achieve your goals is to do it 1% at a time. It is so much easier to motivate yourself to take small steps than giant leaps. Each day you’ll go forward a little bit more and all of those tiny steps will start to compound into lasting progress.
Another crucial point James Clear shares is that our environment can make or break our progress. The environment we are in can make reaching our goals much harder than they need to be, or it can make them even more accessible. He says,
"When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, ‘disciplined' people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control."
To let go of rigidity, take your goals 1% at a time and structure your environment to make each step more accessible.
1% at a Time
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” - Confucius
If your goal is to journal for 10 minutes every day, 1% of that might be opening your journal and writing for 30 seconds. The next day, you could add 30 more seconds, and then 30 more the day after that, and so on.
If you find yourself getting to a point where you are really struggling, consider staying at that amount of time for a week instead of adding more time each day. You can slow it down by only adding 30 seconds each week. As long as you are taking steps, you are growing. It doesn’t matter how slow those steps are. Speed is not the point, progress is, and progress stalls if you get burnt out.
If your goal is to keep your living room clean, start with 1% by picking up one thing. The next day, pick up one thing when you walk past and then another the next time you walk past. The day after that, try picking up 2 things when you walk past the room.
Structure Your Environment
If your environment is full of distractions and temptations, it is full of obstacles. Minimizing the amount of obstacles you have to dodge to get to your goal will make it so much easier to make progress.
If you want to write in your journal every day, pick a time to do it and place your journal in the space that you are usually in at that time. If you want to journal in the morning before you eat breakfast, put your journal in the kitchen. If you want to write before you go to bed, put your journal on your pillow when you make your bed in the morning. If you want to journal before work, put it on your desk.
At the time and place you set aside for journal writing, do your best to avoid all distractions. If you want to journal first thing when you wake up in the morning, leave your phone charging in another room the night before and make sure your journal is within reach of your bed. That way when you wake up, you can’t reach for your phone and your journal is right there.
If you are trying to keep your living room clean, designate each item an assigned spot so you have a specific place to put things when you tidy up. And when you use something in the living room, put it away immediately after you're done. That way you minimize the clutter you have to clean up.
Get creative with your environment. You don’t have to stick to the conventions you were taught growing up. You get to build it however you would like!
Discipline Doesn’t Require Perfection, Only Consistent Effort
Allow yourself grace as you push toward your goals. Putting in consistent effort is important, but you cannot give 100% all the time. Journal a few sentences and throw away a few wrappers. As long as you are giving that 1% each day, you are making great progress.
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