Is Your New Year's Resolution Listed Here? Tips for How to Achieve It.

The New Year is nearing and it’s time to start making your annual resolutions. If you’ll spend the next 365 days working on your resolution—at least in theory, shouldn’t you put some thought into it within the next 10 days? Here are the top five categories for New Year’s resolutions (coincidentally, the five areas covered in SUCCESS) and some tips for achieving them.

1. Business: Start my own business, get a better job, get promoted, be on time—

every time.

TIP: To make your business goals stick, you have to have the right resources. Find a mentor, take business classes, read more books about your industry or find a partner to help. Business goals are often the most audacious, so think big to achieve them.

2. Wealth: Save money for an emergency fund, start saving for retirement, pay down credit card debt.

TIP: Make your wealth goals attainable by making it automatic. Just as you get paid on a regular schedule, put your savings on a schedule, too. Eliminate the temptation of spending your intended savings by having money deducted from your paycheck or running up your credit card debt by destroying your credit cards.

3. Well-Being: Get more sleep, quit smoking, lose weight, start exercising, find time for yourself.

TIP: Be specific in your health goals. If you want to lose weight, decide your goal weight. If you want to quit smoking, set a precise date you aim to be smoke-free. Keeping yourself accountable with deadlines is the key to achieving your well-being resolutions.

4. Giving Back: Contribute more to charities, volunteer more often, tithe regularly.

TIP: It’s easy to push charitable contributions down to the bottom of your weekly to-do list. With your family, job and other obligations to serve, giving back can take a backseat. So, make it easy on yourself. What hobby or skill do you have that you could volunteer? How can you make your church contributions automatic? Schedule specific times throughout the year to purge clothing and other goods for donation drives.

5. Relationships: Spend more time with my family, rekindle my lost friendships

TIP: In any relationship, there are two sides—the side you control and the side you don’t. If you and your significant other communicate poorly, take careful note of what you do and improve it. If you’ve drifted from your best friend lately, take the first step and find out how they are without shifting focus back to you. You can only improve your relationships as much as you improve.