How to Keep Your Goals Without Stupid Tricks

So we've reached the point in the year where most of us have abandoned our resolutions, the gyms have started to empty out, and the first twenty or thirty pages of the wonderful novel we set out to write have started collecting dust. No problem! We can just Google "how to keep goals" and find an easy 1, 2, 3 method with all kinds of gimmicks and tricks for making sure we are back on track.

In fact, I have a lot of tips and tricks on this site that I use to try to hit my goals.

And sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't.

So as we round the middle of February, I started to wonder, how can we go about keeping our goals, when all the lists of quick and easy methods have failed to keep our interest and we've failed to make progress? As I've come to grips with why I've missed some of my own goals, I think I've figured it out for myself, at least: it comes down to some tough truths.