New year’s resolutions are infamous for being broken. By February, many people will have forgotten their plans to exercise more or cut sweets out of their diet.

As a professional financial advisor, you can’t afford to let your business resolutions or goals suffer the same fate.

Simon Reilly, founder of Leading Advisor in Parksville, B.C., has three tips to help keep you on the track to success in 2014:

1. Remind yourself of past successes

You might think your business resolutions are all about looking forward — but not so fast! Your past accomplishments can be an important motivating factor in helping you reach your new goals.

Break down the goals you set for 2013 into monthly segments. What did you achieve in last year, and how did those accomplishments make you feel?

“I guarantee that by the time you get to February,” Reilly says, “you’re going to say: ‘Wow! I can’t believe how much I got done’.”

For example, maybe you accomplished your 2013 goal of increasing your assets under management by 25%. If you have a similar goal for 2014, remind yourself of the excitement you felt last year.

2. Follow an action plan
Declaring your desire to “make more money” or “help more people” is more of a wish than a goal. Your goals should be specific and measurable.

Exactly how do you plan on making more money and when should your goal be realized? The answer might be to increase your high net-worth client base by 20% by yearend. The next question is: What strategy will you implement to achieve that goal?

Says Reilly: “We need to have specific action plans that are going to be tied to that objective to help us realize it.”

Your action plan might include:

  • asking your high net-worth clients for referrals;
  • delivering a presentation at your local country club;
  • inviting prominent community members to a “meet and greet.”

Set deadlines for each of the steps in your action plan so you’re motivated to complete those as well.

3. Attach values — not just dollars —to your goals
“If you don’t have values attached to the goal,” Reilly says, “then you are eventually going to run out of gas. You will lose your inspiration.”

The most obvious reason for working harder may be to make more money, Reilly says. But people are not as strongly motivated by financial benefit as they are by feeling good.

Examples of the values you can attach to your goals can include listening, teaching and understanding. Do you work in your industry to increase those qualities in yourself or in others? What makes you feel good about the work you do?

Maybe you grew up watching your parents struggle to make ends meet, and you work to help others avoid those difficulties. Perhaps your guidance helped a client become debt-free or put a child through university.

Keep those satisfying experiences in mind on those days when nothing seems to be going right.

This is the first instalment in a three-part series on starting the new year on a positive note.

Next: Getting each day off to a good start.