As each new year approaches, so many of us try to start out with a bang when it comes to setting goals and reaching them. As the weeks go by, we then lose our steam, and find that we're just coasting along once again, and barely reaching for our goals at all.

You might just need a new approach to goal setting. Here is a very simple plan:

Choose one goal for each of these three areas of your life:

1. Personal

2. Financial

3. Family

Decide what is most important to you for each area, whether it is losing weight, finding a more rewarding career, mending a relationship with a family member, or something else.

Make a monthly chart, and make a list of the things that you can, or will need to do in order to reach your goals.

At the end of each day, look at your chart, and check the activities that you did, in order to reach for your goals.

At the end of each week, check your chart to see where you have made progress. If you notice that you have done nothing in one area or another, you will be able to see where you need to move up. You will notice that some activities only need done every few days or so-in that case, be sure to judge your efforts accordingly.

Even small steps will take you closer to your goals! Reading a book one chapter every other day will get a book read!

Once your first month is over, you can evaluate how important each goal has been to you. If there are things you have barely worked on, you can decide if you would like to change the goal in that area for the following month, or if it really is important enough to you that you will commit to doing more with it.

If a short term goal is reached before the end of the year, just add a new one in it's place when you finish!

Reaching three goals is better than tossing the entire goal sheet out and reaching no goals.

A great chart I use is this one-free to print http://chartjungle.com/checklists/checklistmonthly.html

Improving our lives always feels great-here's to having that great feeling-three goals at a time!