By Holley Gerth

‘Tis the season for making resolutions, and I am the queen of lofty goals. Around the New Year I start imagining how I will exercise for an hour every morning, bond with my husband every night, and write the most brilliant book ever published within the year. However, three days into the plan, I realize my shiny new ambitions will never be realized. And while all of my good intentions are staring me in the face, I realize something is drastically wrong. Rather than providing much-needed motivation, the goals created to help me live a full, balanced life have instead become the seeds of future disappointment.

One day I was driving to work and telling myself once again, “When things slow down, I will go to the gym and work out all the time. I’ll get in shape. It will be great.” Then I think, “I’ve been telling myself this for five years. Things are never going to slow down. I’ve got to do what I can.” That was the beginning of what I like to call “The Do What You Can Plan.”

“The Do What You Can Plan” is exactly what it sounds like-you do what you can to achieve your goals. For me, this meant doing whatever little bit of exercise I could each day. If I could only fit in ten sit-ups, that’s all I would do. A year later, I’d lost the post-college weight I wanted to shed and dropped a clothing size. I was shocked that I’d actually reached my goal by doing so little. So I decided to start applying “The Do What You Can Plan” to other areas of my life and spend some time figuring out exactly what made it work. Here are a few things I’ve discovered along the way.

Small Can Be Really Big

We often get caught up in thinking we have to do something really big to achieve our goals, but sometimes the little things really can make a difference. Someone once told me that coming to the point where change happens is like adding one drop of water to a bucket every day. One day the bucket just overflows, but it’s all the little drops along the way that make it happen. So when you’re setting goals and thinking about the steps to reach them, think small. Say tomorrow you make a personal goal to walk a mile every day. If you take your dog for a walk around the block, and that’s all you can do for the day-that’s great. Over time, those steps will add up and you’ll go farther than you imagined.