This Year WILL Be Different!

How To Finally Stick To Your New Year’s Resolutions

Just as the end of one year occurs and another one begins, many people begin thinking about what they want to accomplish in the New Year. 

Oftentimes, these goals are things that they didn’t really accomplish the prior year or are ones that are meant to correct issues that didn’t go as planned earlier. 

For instance, perhaps you gained several pounds last year and ate more unhealthy food than you had planned; as a result, you want to eat in a more healthy manner and exercise more in the coming New Year.  It’s certainly good to make these new goals for this year, commonly referred to as “New Year’s Resolutions.”  Many people do. 

The problem is, most people will usually give up these resolutions a few weeks or a few months into the New Year because they can’t stay committed to these New Year’s resolutions.  Therefore, how can you stay committed and accomplish your New Year’s resolutions?

One of the biggest problems many people have is that they create these grandiose New Year’s resolutions that are virtually impossible to achieve without a Herculean effort (and probably a little bit of unrealistic good luck too). 

They really want to set a tone for the New Year to make it vastly different from the prior year, that went wrong.  For instance, you may have wanted to stay in shape, eat home-cooked meals six days a week, and get in 3-4 days of 60 minutes of exercise per week. But due to other commitments and circumstances, you ate home-cooked meals only three days a week and got in 1-2 days of 45-60 minutes of exercise per week.  As a result, you gained 15 pounds, and you weren’t happy about it. 

Thus, you want to “go for the gusto” and intend to eat at home 7 days per week and exercise 5-6 days for at least 60 minutes per week to make up for your poor prior year.

 

While your goals are admirable, they’re unrealistic because you were unable to keep up a less-demanding eating and working-out schedule last year.  To expect yourself to do an even more grueling routine, when it comes to eating and exercising, is just setting yourself up for greater disappointment. 

After all, your work and life commitments are likely to stay the same or even become more involved. This is especially true if you have young children, as they will be a year older.  This means as much time will be taken away for other activities, possibly even more.  Therefore, to expect to just do a more grueling scheduling of eating and exercising is likely to fail before you’re very far into the New Year.

Instead, you should stop chastising yourself for not living up to your own expectations in the prior year. Instead use the information from that year to make up more realistic goals and expectations for this year. 

See what changes you can make in your life and see if you can meet the former year’s goals more consistently.  Maybe you couldn’t eat home-cooked meals six days per week; could you do it in the New Year?  If not, could you eat four or even five days per week at home? 

That would be an improvement over the three you ate before.  The same with exercising: You could only get in 1-2 days per week of 45-60 minutes each day.  Could you do at least 4-5 days per week of 60 total minutes, even if you have to do two sections of 30 minutes each?  That, too, would be an improvement over your earlier efforts.

That is the key: You need to look back at where you veered off course with your goal last year, analyze how you can get back on-track or closer to those goals in the New Year, then take reasonable steps to do so. 

Don’t just throw out some lofty goals that you have virtually no chance of achieving, as you’ll just disappoint yourself. In turn this can lead to you giving up your resolutions and perhaps even getting into more bad habits, which will just disappoint you more.

Therefore, don’t be like many people who just make up some lofty New Year’s resolutions in an effort to making up for those expectations which you did not reach earlier. Instead, analyze why you changed direction and see what adjustments you can make in the upcoming year to get yourself closer to meeting those former goals, then take reasonable action to meet them. 

With your work and life responsibilities being just as time-demanding, if not more so, following the course of action mentioned here will make it much more likely for you to stick with those resolutions for the long term and achieving them this year.

Keep your mindset positive and focused on a successful outcome!