Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions is Hard…
Year after year, do you fail at keeping your New Year’s resolutions? The majority of us do, but not this year, right? Try these 7 expert tips for keeping your New Year’s resolutions and finally reach your goals this year!
Tips for keeping your New Year’s Resolutions
With a new year right around the corner everyone is thinking about changes they’d like to make in the upcoming months.
Coming up with resolutions is the easy part, but what about actually keeping them? Following the 7 tips below will help increase your chance of successfully sticking to your fitness resolution.
1. Set Realistic Goals
Setting resolutions that are within your ability to achieve is the most important place to start. If your goals seem impossible, to begin with, you’ll quickly find yourself discouraged.
Your resolution can still be something that’s challenging, just make sure it’s within your means.
2. Buddy System
Having someone to hold you accountable can push you to work on your goals. Losing weight is in the top 10 resolutions that Americans set for themselves for New Year’s, it’s also one of the toughest resolutions to achieve and the most easily broken.
We seem to find reason after reason why we can’t lose weight or find time for fitness. Exercising with a friend always makes the workout go by quickly, ultimately you have to find the drive within yourself to keep moving.
3. Make a Plan
3. Make a PlanHaving a solid plan for achieving your resolution gives you more drive and direction than an open-ended resolution, be specific about what you want to do. Telling yourself “exercise more” is an idea but “workout on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 PM” is a plan.
Try to reasonably schedule times to work on your goals. Setting aside specific times to work on your resolution gives you time to prepare yourself for the work needed to complete your goals.
4. Break Up Your Resolution
One of the best tips when it comes to keeping your New Year’s resolutions is to take your resolution from one giant goal into several short-term goals. Setting short-term goals to make a long-lasting impact is much more effective than setting one long-term goal. Break your goal into tasks that can be worked on daily or weekly. Having small tasks to complete regularly keeps you focused and driven.
If your resolution is to travel more your short term tasks can look like this:
- Research travel locations
- Prepare passport
- Contact travel agent
These short-term goals give you a direct action to complete, having set tasks provides you a solid direction to move in towards your ultimate goal.
5. Forgive Yourself
One slip in your journey doesn’t mean you have to give up. Change is a constant progress and doesn’t happen automatically.
If you make a misstep in keeping your resolution you have to get back on the metaphorical horse and keep trying. If you find yourself struggling to keep your resolution, consider the possibility that your goal is too strict. Resolutions like “will not eat any sweets” are much more easily broken than “will only have sweets at fancy cafes”.
Allowing yourself some wiggle room creates a more realistic goal, moderation is much healthier than complete restriction.
6. Use an App
6. Use an AppThese days there’s an app for nearly everything, New Year’s resolutions are no exception. If you want to save more money in the new year there are financial advisor apps to help you out. There are habit-breaking apps for those looking to stop smoking.
There are even habit-forming apps to encourage positive behavior and help you keep track of your progress with meeting your goals. If you want to increase productivity you can try apps like Any.do or 30/30.
7. Know Your Limit
Setting multiple big goals is a surefire way to fail, you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed by all the things you should be doing to achieve your resolution. Limiting yourself to one important resolution gives you a better chance of making it through the year.
Choose carefully which project you want to undertake for the upcoming year by looking at the details of what each resolution would require to complete.
Once you have a solid idea of what you need to achieve your goal you can decide which resolution is most important to you.
Wrap-Up
Half of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by the six-month mark…
Having a realistic mindset about your resolution and understanding why so many people fail can put you on the right track.
With the tips above in mind, you can go into the new year confident that you can be successful in keeping your New Year’s Resolutions! Believing in yourself is a great place to start.
- Spring Exercise Tips - May 8, 2023
- 7 Ways to Stick to Your Holiday Workouts - December 17, 2021
- 7 Tips: How To Prevent Injury Running in Winter - January 22, 2018
