When you’re preparing for a soon-to-be new year, it’s easy to start making New Year’s resolutions, but the thing is, you don’t have to make literal resolutions to be happy with your year.

Truth be told, most people don’t fulfill those resolutions anyway, and this can actually make your year worse in the long run.

While there’s no such thing as a guarantee that your year will be phenomenal, you can greatly increase the odds of it being a great year with some simple tips, and it’s much easier than you think.

How to Avoid a Bad Year?

So if you want to avoid a bad year and instead have a good one, there are things you can do so it’s more likely to happen for you.

Most people have goals and things they want to do, but they don’t have a specific plan to achieve those goals. Regardless of what you consider the traits necessary to have a good year, below are some of the suggestions that help you avoid having a bad year instead.

1.  Decide on Things You’d Like to Do

Some people have huge goals, and others have smaller goals, but regardless of what you want out of your life, getting them always starts by deciding that you want them in the first place.

Do you want to get a new job in the upcoming year? Do you want to start a home business? Or do you simply want to save up XX amount of dollars for a special item?

The things you want to do can be small or large, but your first step to getting them is to acknowledge that you want them so that you can move to determine ways to achieve these goals.

2.  Make Sure Your Goals Are Realistic

If you never went to college but you want to be the CEO of a company in a year, you’re very likely to be disappointed by the time the year is done.

When it comes to things you want to do, especially if you’ve never made specific goals before, it’s always better to start small instead of going overboard with your dreams.

If nothing else, starting small and being realistic means you’re much less likely to be disappointed a year from now. Also, never be embarrassed by your goals and feel like they’re too small. Each goal you make is another chance for you to grow as a person.

3.  Break Down Your Goals into Smaller Pieces

Regardless of what you want to do, all of your goals—and you should keep this number small to begin with—need to be broken down into specific steps to achieve them.

If you wish to be a CEO, the least you’ll need is a college degree, so if you only finished two years of college, make it a point to go back to school and finish your degree.

It’s also best if you make a list of the steps you’ll need to take to achieve your goal. This way, it’ll feel good to check off the items so you can see exactly how close you are to making your dream a reality.

4.  Work on Your Wants and Desires Every Day

If you want to do something with your life, you can’t just concentrate on it every once in a while. Instead, you have to think about it every day because it will take a certain amount of work to make things start to happen.

Every day you should ask yourself, am I doing all I can to bring myself one step closer to my dream job/achievement/goal?

5.  Don’t Get Discouraged by Setbacks

Regardless of how hard you work, there will be setbacks. After all, we’re only human, but setbacks shouldn’t become a reason to give up altogether. When you have a setback, study what went wrong and determine what you can do to move forward to the next step.

You should also decide exactly what to do so that it doesn’t happen again in the future. In other words, learn from your mistakes, but don’t let them be a reason for you to quit.

Attitude Is Everything

If you want to avoid a bad year, you have to plan for it, and your attitude is what will make it all happen for you. Even if you’ve never made goals in the past, there’s no time like the present to get started.

Life is always better when you decide to be more than a couch potato and go out and do something that’s just for you, even if it’s a new goal or desire.

When you set goals, even small ones, and achieve them, it’s hard to have a bad year because you’ll feel better about yourself in more ways than one. You’ll find that you have more energy and will start looking forward to each new day. And everyone deserves that.

Conclusion

Wondering how to avoid a bad year is normal, but it takes some action on your part. You can’t just sit around and wish for your year to be better than the last one.

You have to motivate yourself and decide to make it happen by setting specific goals, determining ways to achieve those goals, keeping the goals realistic, and never giving up until you’ve accomplished them.

We can’t control everything that happens in our lives, but we can control a lot of it if we put our minds to it. Decide what you want and go after it—you deserve nothing less.