By Amanda Cross, Student at the University of Central Arkansas

At the beginning of the year it is hard to find resolutions that not only hold you accountable but are also achievable.

However, making achievable resolutions is the best step toward meeting those resolutions. If you make unattainable goals, you will often get stressed out because you couldn’t reach the goal you wanted.

It’s good to push yourself, but don’t push yourself so hard that you break down or get stressed.

1. Try to do a little better than you did before. Say you want to lose weight. Don’t pick a ridiculous number of pounds to lose … instead, challenge yourself to lose more weight than you lost in a previous year. If you lost 15 pounds in 2012, strive to lose 20 in 2013.

2. Be healthy. Don’t go overboard with your resolutions and don’t chose a resolution that isn’t healthy for you. Just as with the weight goal, make sure it’s actually healthy for you to lose the amount of pounds you want lose. If you are already 120 pounds, losing another 20 pounds probably wouldn’t be a healthy lifestyle choice.

3. Set weekly goals for yourself. A part of setting reasonable resolutions is also setting aside time to devote to your resolution. Make mini-resolutions that help you attain your goal every week. This helps by eliminating stress and delegating the goal throughout the year instead of getting frustrated with yourself.

4. Be specific and set goals that can be easily managed. If a goal cannot be managed well, it’s easy to get frustrated. Set an endpoint. Instead of saying you want to try being nicer to people, you could try changing your goal to give one person a compliment each day. This way, you can more easily hold yourself accountable.

5. Know yourself. Your friends' goals may be completely different than yours, and you have to let that happen. Not all goals work for everyone because that person’s level of dedication could be more or less than yours. Don’t feel like you have to one-up your friends! If your goal is to eat healthier foods two days a week but your friend's resolution is to eat healthy foods three days a week, let it be. You are two different people and only you know what your goals should be.

Making resolutions that help you and don’t stress you out is hard to do. With a little resolution managing, it’s easy to figure out the best goals to make for yourself.

Want to find ways to keep your New Year's resolutions? Check out our New Year, New Chic board on Pinterest.

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