There’s a new year upon us, and that means most of us will be setting exciting resolutions to meet in the months ahead. If you want to stick with them, here are some fun ways to use your journal to keep you motivated.

Write About Your Plan

As you may have heard: “A goal without a plan is just a dream.” Put pen to paper and write down exactly what you’re going to accomplish. Think big but no impossibly big, you want something you can achieve reasonably. Start by writing out your big year-end goal, and then break it down into smaller goals that will keep you in-check as the weeks go by. Write about where you are now and how you think things will be different when you get to where your end goal will put you.

Make Check-Ins Easy

Once you have your big goal created that you’re going to accomplish in the next 12 months, you need to break that down into smaller milestones that will keep you motivated and tracking your
progress throughout the year. Your milestones might be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Ideally, monthly would work best as it’s frequent enough to keep you actively working towards your goal while not so frequent that you get bored with journalling and ultimately lose your motivation. If you write in your journal each day, making your check-in pages will be easy. Count out the
pages and mark one day each month as your check-in page where you’re going to write about your goal and what you’ve been doing to accomplish it so far. You’ll also be looking at your

milestone and deciding if you have met it or not. For instance, you might have a check-in on the 15th of each month. You’ll go through your journal marking each date (and leaving ample space for each entry). On the page devoted to the 15th of the month, you’ll write down the milestone you’re supposed to have met, along with next month’s milestone to keep your eye on the prize. When you reach that page in your journal, you’ll write about your progress so far and what you’ll do differently to help you meet next month’s milestone even more easily.

Reflect On Your Journey

The end of the year is obviously going to be a great time to reflect on all sorts of things, but you can also reflect on your journey throughout the year. Your journal doesn’t have to be all about this goal, but it helps to write about it every once in a while to sort of “check in” with your own thoughts and feelings to make sure you’re working towards something that you really want. We change constantly, so never be afraid to change your goals as long as that’s what you really want to do.