Are you trying to figure out how to keep your New Year’s resolutions for this year? I know it can be discouraging because you probably have not stuck to your previous resolutions. I hear you.
New Year, means turning the page to a new chapter of our lives. It’s a fresh start we are all looking forward to. I know I am. We are thinking about ways to improve ourselves, so we come up with New Year Resolutions. According to Stat, the five most common New Year resolutions are (1) Living healthier, (2) Personal improvement or happiness, (3) Losing weight, (4) Career or job goals, (5) Financial goals. Shocking, right? I’m sure all of us have thought about these as our New Year resolutions at some point. But how to keep new year’s resolutions is an entirely different question.
It can be discouraging when year after year these resolutions fail and we go back to being our old selves, because, well life happens. We know that new gym memberships are highest in January, but around 80% of those new members quit during the second quarter of the year. According to U.S. News and World Report, 80% of New Year resolutions crumble by the second week of February. FEBRUARY! Now imagine if you followed through all your New Year Resolutions, or even just one of them. How would you be, feel or look by December of next year? I am sure you know about a success story related to someone’s New Year’s Resolutions. That can be you. So, let’s talk all things on how to keep New Year’s resolutions.
This post is about 11 tips on how to keep New Year’s resolutions. Let’s get right in.
PICK UP THIS BOOK
Atomic Habits is a great book. It is heavily advertised in the self-improvement category for a reason. It addresses how we can introduce good habits and get rid of bad ones and all the challenges that come with it. The author tackles the research that has been done in this area, but also introduces the readers to new ideas about how to turn something into a habit. I love reading books, and I really think that it can impact the way we think about things at a deeper level. I will not spoil the book for you, but one of the ideas that struck me was habit stacking, I did not realize I was doing it. It is about doing one thing that is a habit of yours and building another one on top of it. After I drink coffee, I will go to the gym. The strategy increases the likelihood that the new habit will stick. Consider adopting this.
HOW TO PICK YOUR GOAL
It should be your wish. Take a moment to think about this. It may come to you naturally, but if it doesn’t, pick something you genuinely care about and want to change. Don’t pick popular resolutions, just because everyone else seems satisfied by them. You are going to put a lot of time and effort into making these your personal goals, so make it easier on yourself by picking something you are passionate about changing.
5 IS TOO MANY
You might think about setting more than five resolutions you want to achieve for the new year, because well there’s twelve months to accomplish these goals and it does not sound like too much. But this is a recipe for failure. I think the biggest number of New Year Resolutions is close to three. You will have to work very hard to make certain actions part of your habit and maybe along the way kick some bad habits. This takes effort and time. Your list can be longer in case you accomplish the top three, you can then move on to the others.
SET CONCRETE GOALS
‘Lose weight’, ‘be healthy’, ‘read more’ are still very broad goals to achieve. You want your resolutions to sound more like ‘lose 15 pounds’, ‘work out for thirty minutes four times a week’, ‘read ten pages a day’. These are concrete goals. You know when you’ve achieved them.
PLAN WITH SMALL STEPS
You need to have a plan and steps to your ultimate goal before December 31st. Better yet, maybe slow start into your goal before the end of the year. This could look like buying a book and placing it on your night stand, starting with reading just one page every night before going to sleep, and then working your way to ten pages a day in three months. You need to know how you’re going to achieve your goals otherwise it’s only an idea and you have no path to follow. A study at the Wharton School of Business showed that forming a plan dramatically increased the success rate of those getting a flu shot. You also need to stop thinking about the end-goal when you first begin. It might feel very overwhelming if you had a full-time job and you thought about all the things you needed to do to launch a blog. But if you had a plan and focused on one step at a time, instead of the big picture, you have more chances of being successful.
ENVIRONMENT
Clear talks about this in his book, Atomic Habits, extensively. Again, this book is a must read. The environment a person lives in has great influence on their ability to take on or quit a habit. So, this might be something like joining a running group to prepare you for the marathon you plan to run next year (the group being your new environment), or seeing your friends who smoke a lot less because your goal is to quit smoking next year.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Accountability can come in many forms. You can choose to tell your friends and family about your resolutions, hopefully they will help support you. But there is something more in talking to the people you’re close to. In many ways, when they see you not following through your resolutions, they will ask you and that is one way of holding yourself accountable. The other is to have a set plan of what you will do if you miss out on your engagements. If you needed to go to the gym three times a week, but missed more than a session or two. What are you going to do? Sometimes having an action plan to your bad habits (here – not going to the gym) is a way to hold yourself accountable. This could be something in the lines of paying your partner 10 USD each time you skip the gym. As Clear describes a similar example in his book, for some of us we might need to do this.
TAKE NOTES
You can take notes by entering the information on your phone’s calendar, or by actually marking your calendar or planner; basically, a track record of the times you were able to keep up with your newly set habit. This way you have something to go back to and be proud of, especially when you do not have the level of motivation when you first started. I like the planner because I can see at a glance exactly what days of the month, I did what I needed to do.
BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF
No one can achieve anything major in a short period of time. Set some reasonable expectations and be graceful with yourself. You will have nights where you are so exhausted, you won’t reach for your book and that’s ok. We’re shooting for the long run. Change is a process and the path towards your ultimate goal is never linear. There is a lot of information about how long it takes for something to become a habit and then be part of your personality. I don’t think the notion of 21 days is correct for either. But at some point, skipping your habits is going to feel off. You’re going to dread the day you didn’t hit the gym. That day will come at a different time for each of us in this process.
REWARD YOURSELF
This can be anything you want it to be. If you keep your engagements for an [X] amount of time, you will allow yourself [X]. This could be eating out, buying something you’ve been wanting or enjoying a smoothie after your work out. Another push to keep you in the mindset, because let’s face it at some point this habit of keeping up is going to get boring.
DUST YOURSELF OFF & TRY AGAIN
Every 3 months, review where you are in the process and evaluate what has worked for you and what hasn’t. If you have not made any progress, identify your challenges and roadblocks and change your strategy. Are you working on too many goals at a time? Have you made major career changes, and it’s taking up a lot of your time? It’s ok to have made zero progress till March and realize that during this step. Don’t be discouraged, hit reset. It’s better to start in March then leave it till next year. You still have a lot of time.
This post was about 11 tips on how to keep New Year’s resolutions. I hope it helped you!
As always, thank you so much for stopping by and reading.
See you next week,
Girl on the Upper East Side
If you enjoyed reading this, you might enjoy reading my post from last week: UNIQUE CHRISTMAS GIFTS 2023.
I used to think differently, thanks for the information.
You’re welcome!