Happy new month, it is July 1st, 2025. You are through the first half of 2025.
“Time flies…,” you quip.
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot,” Michael Altshuler adds.
But you look back from January 2025, you realise you have been a poor pilot. Your 2025 New Year’s resolutions have quietly slipped through the cracks.
You sailed through the January, February… and now June is over. But sadly, you lost track of your resolutions. The resolutions set and rolled out at the beginning of the year are long forgotten, or ignored.
But it should sadden you that you haven’t lived by the goals you set. You are not alone. By June, more than half of people have abandoned their resolutions. You shouldn’t weep yourself. Losing track doesn’t mean that is failure.
It is a perfect opportunity for you to redefine your life plan with clarity, purpose, and a fresh sense of direction. It gives you room to evaluate the sense and essence of setting goals, reflect why they fail and how to achieve set goals for life progress.
Why Resolutions Fail
There is always pressure to set bold goals every new year because we are accustomed to want to turn over a new leaf every 1st January.
But the pressure to start off in a new way having failed previously can lead to setting unrealistic goals. Unrealistic goals such as waking up 4 am on a weekday, hitting a gym every day to shed off wait by February, reading a book every fortnight or finishing two short courses within three months; often lack sustainable habits and mind-set shifts that lasting change requires.
But just because you lost track of your goals, it doesn’t mean throwing in the towel and wait for another January 1st. January is just an arbitrary date. Goals can be set or revised anytime.
Structured Schedules
We run our lives and activities based on the traditional schedules. For instance, most of our key tasks are structured within the 8 am – 5 pm, Monday to Saturday, and month to month. Within this schedules, we give our best knowing well that from 5 pm, Saturday afternoon and Sunday, it is time to ‘rest’. Every end month is a time to receive a pay check, an inspiration to give maximum effort in the next month.
As such, we can veer off the course of our personal and professional goals. Yet we can sacrifice sometime in our resting time within a week to make some progress on our goals
Identify your Vision
To avoid falling into the trap of new year resolutions, it is important to know your vision, your dream life.
A vision is a long-term and a meaningful goal of who you aspire to be, where you want to be and the impact you want to create in your lifetime.
When you know your vision, you can easily plan your life around it instead of relying on structured schedules that you have no control over.
With a clear vision, you can draw a life plan. This is your vision broken down to short term, midterm, and long term goals. A life plan can serve as a roadmap to guide you towards your desired destiny. With a roadmap, you can run your own marathon year to year with goals set, revised and adjusted anytime of the year and any season of your life without the pressure of every new year.
A life plan will always guide and a remind you of what you aspire to achieve in your life. It helps you follow your vision, align your daily activities with your goals, and meet your personal and professional objectives year in year out with less struggle.
A life plan is a proactive approach to living rather than a reactionary approach that is dictated by circumstances and feelings.
Mid-Year Is a Strategic Reset Point
If the goals you set in January no longer fits the life you wanted or drives you, this is actually the best moment for you to reflect and evaluate what’s working and what’s not and begin to develop your life plan instead of waiting for 2026 to make new resolutions.
Use this July to conduct your life audit, develop life plan, and pre-test the plan and live the plan.
Five Ways to Redefine Your Life Plan
Identify your vision
What is your vision? By defining what kind of future you want to create for yourself and why it matters. Ask yourself:
- What do I value most in life? e.g. impact, creativity, family, growth
- What kind of legacy do I want to leave?
- What brings me deep satisfaction:
Once you’re clear on your vision, goal setting and decision making becomes easier.
Set Theme-Based Goals
Rather than rigid goals, try themes that are aligned to your vision such as skill development, well-being, relationships, or financial independence. Let this goals guide your daily actions and weekly priorities.
Create Micro-Habits
Big goals can be intimidating. Break them into tiny habits. For instance, if you want to read more, start with 5- page a day. If you want to get fit, commit to 5-minute walks. To achieve progress, consistency is key.
Schedule Reflection Time
Set monthly 1-hour check-ins with yourself to review what’s working, think about the gains (what is working) and misses (what is not working) and adjust.
Pursue Growth
While following your life plan, seek not be perfect but pursue growth. Growth is not linear. Appreciate the trials and errors, derive lessons and use them as building blocks to achieve your goals.
Embrace Flexibility
Life is unpredictable. A life plan is a living document and not a rigid document. You can always change it to adapts to your changing needs and settings.
Losing track of your resolutions doesn’t mean the year is lost or is a sign of failure. It is an opportunity for you to reflect why the failure, identify your vision, redefine life your plan, and move forward proactively.
Amos Burkeywo is a Steward at TraLead Centre, centre for transformational leadership.
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