How to stick to your New Year's resolutions:
The start of a new year is an opportune moment to reflect on how successful the previous year has been and what we want to get out of the forthcoming year. It's not surprising therefore that many of us use this time to write down our new year's resolutions. As many of us would attest to, however, the difficulty is often persevering with your resolutions once the initial few days and weeks of the new year have passed. In this article, I'll look therefore at how you can maximise the probability that you will adhere to the resolutions that you have set yourself.
Setting your new year's resolutions:
One of the frequent difficulties that people have is that they either set completely unrealistic resolutions, or else they set resolutions that are very vague and hard to measure against. A typical resolution is to get fit this year' and this desire sees huge increases in gym membership every January! However, once you've got to February or March, how are you going to assess whether you are fit enough? The danger is that you will give up on the resolution as there isn't a clear enough focus to drive you towards. A better way of meeting that desire to get fit might be to say something along the lines of I will go to the gym at least once per week and will run a 10k race in June'. Suddenly, you've got a measurable element to the resolution and you've set yourself a target for later in the year that should hopefully drive you to get out there and ensure that you are doing the required amount of exercise.
I mentioned the need to be realistic as well. A resolution of "I want to earn $20,000 from my writing this year" might not be realistic and may result in you becoming disillusioned and giving up. A more realistic target might be to say something like "I want to earn $1,000 from Helium this year". Of course, it can be tricky to get the balance right. You don't want the target to be too easy but you stand a better chance of persevering with the resolution if you have something that you can realistically strive for.
Enshrining your resolutions on paper:
When we're working towards goals, it's good to have them written down so there is some tangible reminder of what we are working towards. Ideally, you should print them out and display them somewhere where you are going to see them regularly. For many of us, pinning our new year's resolutions near our computer screen will be a good way of being reminded of them. The danger with resolutions is that we write them and then forget about them, so having a written reminder of them that you see every day will significantly increase the probability that you will stick to them.
Share your resolutions with other people:
If you have someone that you can share your resolutions with, then this is a great way of further increasing the likelihood that you will achieve them. Ideally, you and your partner might exchange resolutions and then periodically get together to review how you are progressing against them. The real benefit of this approach is that it applies some pressure. By stating your resolutions to that other person, you will now want to make sure that you deliver on what you've said you're going to so. This will especially be the case if you've agreed to review progress to date at a later point with that person. No-one likes having to report back that they've failed or forgotten about their resolutions!
If you don't live with someone to share your resolutions with, then another option might be to publish your stated resolutions on a blog. That way, you're saying to the whole world what you're going to do and hopefully this will spur you on to stick with them.
Keep a list of achievements:
As well as ticking off when I've completed a resolution, I keep a month by month record of everything good that I've achieved. These achievements aren't limited specifically to my resolutions but many of them will hopefully be connected. The benefit of this approach is that it should be good for your morale. You can see all the good stuff that you've achieved and, hopefully, this will help keep you motivated for the forthcoming months. If you find yourself getting in a rut, then you can look back at previous months to see all the good stuff you've achieved which will hopefully be what's required to get you kick started again.
Create a plan:
For some of your bigger resolutions, it may not be enough that you want to achieve the goal. Instead, you may also need to work out a plan as to how you're going to achieve your goal. To take an example of this, your new year resolution might be "to move to a new house". There's a hell of a lot involved in selling an existing house and buying a new house, so if you want to successfully achieve that goal then it's not going to be enough to randomly work towards it without a detailed roadmap of all the activities that need to take place.
Remind yourself why your resolutions are important:
When we set resolutions there is usually an underlying reason for each of the resolutions that we set. For financial-related resolutions, for example, the long-term objective may be to be in a position to retire early or to be able to afford your dream home. For health-related resolutions, you may have been suffering health problems and you want to feel good again and be free of any dangers to your health. In these examples, it can be beneficial to provide yourself with visual reminders of why the resolutions are important. For example, maybe your son or daughter is due to get married and you want to be able to fit into your dress or suit. Pinning a wedding-related photo to your fridge might be an effective way of reinforcing the importance of sticking to your plan! Alternatively, for your finance resolution, maybe you could pin up a picture of a nice house or new car, etc, to remind you what the end goal is behind your current sacrifices.
SUMMARY:
Setting new year's resolutions is something that most of us do, although to different levels of detail. However, sadly, most of those who set resolutions, have stopped working towards them by the time March comes and therefore don't achieve the things that they had considered to be important. For those people, however, who get into the habit of persevering with their resolutions, there is a much better chance that they will achieve the things that they set out to do. The opportunity to change your life is there, so now it's just a case of putting in place resolutions that are measurable and a mechanism to ensure that you do regularly review progress. Ideally, you will have enlisted the help of a friend or family member to review progress with and this is probably the single biggest thing that you can do to increase the likelihood that you will actually stick to your resolutions this year.