Welcome to a brand new year, filled with wonderful possibilities! I know that many of you have dreams that you want to pursue in the days and weeks ahead.

After reading through many, many scientific studies, I've put together this four-step process to help you achieve your goals in 2024.

What's your dream? What matters most to you? What hope have you kept hidden inside of you for far too long? Your dreams are yours for a reason — define them, so that you can claim them.

Goals are the achievements that ladder up into the dream. The most effective goals are 1) clearly defined, 2) hard but achievable.

List out the different goals that will help you to move towards the dream. If you're not sure where to start, imagine you've achieved your dream and you're telling someone the story of how you did it. What was the first milestone along the way? Another useful strategy: look to those who have achieved a similar dream. What goals marked their path?

Now, break that goal down into the steps you will take. Steps should be behaviors, actions or tasks. Think about it like this: what will you do, today?

If you feel overwhelmed, make the steps smaller. This will help reduce overwhelm and decision fatigue, which can lead to procrastination. And 2024 is not a year of procrastination—it's a year of action.

For the greatest likelihood of success, make the steps as enjoyable as you can. With each, strive to make it fun, satisfying, or meaningful.

Turn your attention from the bigger picture and focus on the here and now: what's in your control, which is the step in front of you. And take it.

When you have, celebrate yourself. Mark it down in some way if that helps you, giving you a visual record of your progress. Pause and say to yourself: "Look what I did. I took that step. And it's moving me towards my dream."