Do Your New Year Resolutions More Smarter!
Introduction
Making new year’s resolutions is something most people have become accustomed to over many years, watching other peers and family members doing the same at the turn of midnight. So, it becomes a sort of tradition to make them with all the best intentions of sticking to them in the world!
However, back in reality, very few people can stick to new year’s resolutions, which has also become a bit of a race to see how long you can keep up your resolution!
People who make new year’s resolutions will fall into one of three categories:
- Those people last a matter of hours before they immediately default back to the older habits they wanted to break (ironically!)
- Those people who stick with their word and execute the new year’s resolution with perfection, but only for a mere matter of weeks or months before the struggle takes over and old habits creep in
- Those people who make the resolutions and never look back! They have made the internal decision to not be or do the things they have been doing, and they never go back that way again
As a majority, people fail to stick by their new year resolutions, but why is this?
Let’s have a look and see which one resonates with you the most and how we can get over falling at these hurdles!
1. Your New Year’s Resolution Is Unrealistic
When we set unrealistic targets, we often quit because the target is too grand or we are not seeing any instant results.
Humans always need to feel like they have achieved something, so when a huge target is not achieved, it feels like a failure; if we fail, we don’t continue!
Suppose you set smaller and more manageable targets within the scope of the bigger target. In that case, you will feel more achieved along the way to the ultimate goal!
Rather than setting a 1-year goal only, set the 365-day goal, and then set the monthly goal that accumulates to the big yearly plan, and break it down some more into weekly or even daily achievement milestones. That way, you can track your route to the big goal at every stage rather than think you are failing when you haven’t hit your yearly goal in 4 hours!
2. Your Mindset Is “All-Or-Nothing.”
When people set new year’s resolutions with an all-or-nothing mindset, the determination to succeed is powerful initially, and this can be kept up with for a limited amount of time!
But when the small bumps in the road appear, the new year’s resolution boat capsizes spectacularly, and the “nothing” element sets in, and all the hard work goes by the wayside.
Go easy on yourself!
Those who are balanced in their mindset will have much more success than those who let the small hurdles get in the way of the overall goal.
By recognizing that things come up and some parts of life will try and throw you off course, you will be anticipating the problems before they arise and can navigate around them without declaring total failure and ending up back at square one.
3. You Forget That Most Major Changes In Life Take Time!
Rome was not built in a day, and your new year’s resolutions will not be achieved in a day either!
Suppose you are impatient and want all of the results from your resolutions before you have even finished saying the sentence of what they are. In that case, you will find that failure in the individual tasks will creep up quicker, and you will get overpowered by them.
It takes 21 years to break an old habit and the same amount of time to develop new ones that stick.
You have to at least give a fighting chance to succeed! Take your time, face the hurdles as they come, and navigate around them, all the time keeping a laser focus on the end goal.
If you give up sooner than the new resolution has bedded into your daily routine and life, it will never stick. Determination is the key here!
4. You Don’t Journal To Track Your Progress And Feelings.
Suppose your new year’s resolution is to lose weight or eat better, for instance. In that case, it is always such a great idea to keep track of everything you are doing to achieve this resolution.
Having a document that allows you to see how far you are improving and where you may need further improvement will let you look back at everything you have done and are doing to keep you on track for that ultimate goal.
A journal of everything you do and don’t do that works towards your final goal you have stated as a resolution will be something you will be forever grateful for, as you can assess how every day is going and how you are feeling at every stage of your journey.
5. You Don’t Reward Yourself Appropriately.
Rewarding yourself for sticking to the decisions you make on New Year’s Eve can be so motivating, but think carefully about how to do this appropriately!
Treating yourself at particular milestones in your resolution journey can be challenging to know how to do. Still, if you take the time to thank yourself for being determined and achieving the small goals along the way, you can be spurred on to do the next!
Connecting your achievement to something that makes you feel good is always going to give a positive vibe to your progression, so do something that gives you the fuzzy heart or a big smile, such as seeing your favorite show, having your nails done, or a spa day – something that can make you feel a million dollars with no danger of rewarding yourself with the one thing you are trying to change with your resolution!
Conclusion
Setting new year’s resolutions is almost an ingrained part of New Year’s Eve’s midnight bells.
However, making huge decisions and setting significant goals with no plan or process on how to get to the big finish line is something that most people miss and inevitably fail their new year’s resolutions.
It’s human nature to want to succeed; however, life throws curveballs at us all the time. If they are powerful enough, they will derail your resolution train and failure can be felt way more than success.
Track your progress, set realistic goals along the way, and go easy on yourself! Rome was not built in a day!
Happy New Year!