Whether you are a New Year’s Resolution person or not, the end of one year and the beginning of a new one tends to make us reflect on what we’d like to change going forward. What can we be better at? What can the turning of a new year bring that we didn’t have in the past year?
The stats on resolutions aren’t horribly impressive, however, keep this mind: according to verywellmind.com, people who set resolutions are ten times more likely to achieve behavior change than those who don’t. In the Forbes article about how to keep your New Year resolutions, it’s reported 19% of people who make them actually stick to them.
Perhaps you’re motivated by beating the odds? Well then, making and keeping a New Year’s resolution is for you!
Making a Resolution
Resolution is really another word for goal. Aiming for a better body, salary or lap-time is natural and entirely human! How often do you wake up each day and think about the one or two (or dozen) things you need to get done? Perhaps at the start of a month, you mentally tick off items you don’t want to push off until the last minute.
As you can surmise, we make resolutions quite often. Declaring your intentions is the easy part. Fulfilling them is where things get tricky. There are ways you can help yourself to achieve your goals though (we have a whole blog on goals you can read here too).
- Make small goals that build up to something bigger
- Be very specific and realistic
- Pick one or two goals at a time
- Write them down and track your progress regularly
- Don’t wait for a special day of the year, month or week
Keeping a Resolution
There are a plethora of reasons why we tend to fail at keeping resolutions.
- Lack of motivation
- No accountability
- Poor time management
- Not truly serious
- Get bored
- Lack of daily dedication
Despite the above reasons, Psychology Today reports goals are important to growth, direction and happiness. If you can map out the why and the how of your resolutions, you can create a path that avoids the common pitfalls. Just saying you want to lose weight doesn’t make it happen. Here is an example though of how you can meaningfully prepare to make that your resolution AND see it through.
Resolution: Lose Weight
Mini goal: Lose 5 pounds in 5 weeks
Tracking: daily calories and exercise minutes
Motivation: pick a pair of pants you want to fit into – hang them up as a reminder
Dedication: work on it daily
Accountability: Share your resolution with trusted people, have them check in with you
Losing one pound a week is likely a goal that is attainable for most people with the proper diet and exercise structure. The resolution is reasonable in other words (check with your doctor to be sure). And we’ve given ourselves a way to track, motivate, and be held accountable. Once you’ve put all that effort in (OK, it’s not that much effort really), you have already dedicated yourself to the ambition at the very least. After that, it’s just one day at a time!
Maybe, reading this blog was your first step to tackling your next goal…we love to be helpful like that. Good luck!
