If you want to know how to keep new year’s resolutions, you’ll love this article.
The last day of the year (or the next few days) is the best time to take a look at the past 12 months and make New Year’s resolutions.
Some of us want to go back to the gym; others decide to quit smoking or eat healthier and stop eating fast food, while others decide to save some cash. All these goals are noble, but many people usually give up in the first three months of the new year.
How do you stay with New Year’s resolutions? How to achieve the desired goal? Here are some proven tips that will bring you much closer to success.
How To Keep New Year’s Resolutions?
1. Identify a specific and realistic goal that is within your reach.
The most common New Year’s resolution is from the category of fitness and healthy lifestyle: I will start going to the gym.
What is your goal, and what do you mean by “going to the gym”? Running on a treadmill to improve your fitness? Strength training to enhance your muscles? Or pose in front of a mirror to take another picture on Instagram or Facebook?
Set yourself a specific and measurable goal – by August this year, I want to lose 40 pounds; this year, I will raise a barbell weighing 220 pounds; I will be so stretched that I will touch my head with my knees straightened out.
Don’t take on impossible achievements such as winning the national Crossfit championship (unless you are a professional Crossfit player) or losing 50 pounds in 3 months. Unreal decisions not only quickly turn into defeats, but also effectively discourage you from fighting for your goals.
Once you’ve reached your goal, nothing stands in the way of setting your next goal. So as to prove to ourselves every day that there are no impossible things for us. To become a better person and achieve more.
2. Regularly monitor your progress and set milestones
Once you have set yourself a goal, it is very important to set it within the set time frame and keep an eye on it regularly. Milestones will help you to do this, and they will be very useful as a progress indicator.
Let’s take another popular resolution: quitting smoking. It is very difficult to quit right away, especially when you are currently smoking a whole pack of cigarettes during the day. If we want to quit smoking in 6 months completely, let’s plan three milestones: in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th month of the resolution.
The first milestone can be the reduction of cigarettes from 1 pack per day to 1 pack per 2 days. When we reach this goal, we build up a reduced need for nicotine in our body for the whole 1 and 2 months.
The second milestone should be another reduction to 1 packet per 4 days. This will be another visible success. Halfway through the decision, instead of burning 20 cigarettes a day, 5 is enough.
The last milestone will be a sprint to the finish line: complete quitting. For the last month, we have been making sure that we have established new habits and do not return to the situation before the decision.
SEE ALSO: How To Remove Worry From Your Life: Proven Steps And Strategies
3. Stay in touch with people with similar goals to yours
It is known that difficulties are easier to overcome in a group than alone. It is therefore worth finding neighbors, friends or colleagues who want to achieve a similar goal. Mutual support in the pursuit of the desired finish, keeping an eye on one’s progress, or sharing advice will make it much more difficult for us to give up on our decision.
It would be a good idea to go to the gym and work together on your goals or to find a bistro with healthy food to replace fast food at lunchtime. This will quickly create a sense of community, which will motivate us, and in moments of weakness, we will not be alone with our doubts.
At the same time, it is worth making sure that the atmosphere in the group is healthy, full of mutual support and respect. Let’s not allow for pinching, malicious comments, or devastating rivalry, which may eventually turn into not only a failure of the goal but also ruin relations.
4. Get ready for crises and have a contingency plan
The road to the goal will not be easy. From the very beginning, there will be difficulties and days when we will have to overcome various problems and bad habits.
Of course, while a day off from the gym or a fast hot-dog at the station will not ruin our decision, regular and frequent occurrence of this type of “disorder” can have a catastrophic result.
So take care of an emergency program to help you stay on track (1). If we don’t want to go to today’s training, we can reschedule it and instead go to the swimming pool or go on a recreational bike.
Similarly to saving – if we decide to put aside 5 dollars a day and we don’t want to do so today, let’s put 6 dollars in the moneybox for the next week.
The worst thing you can do is to give up your decision or ignore the more and more often appearing weaker days when you don’t make the assumptions.
SEE ALSO: How To Learn From Your Past With Self-Modelling Technique Step By Step
5. Ask a friend or family member to “supervise” your decisions
Although it seems senseless or even embarrassing to many people, it is worth introducing a kind of “supervisor” into our goals. Such a person should know us well and, at the same time, be strong enough to point out our shortcomings without any scruples.
A good relationship is necessary for anticipating our weakest points, i.e., potential temptations and moments of weakness (2). Proper action in advance will allow us to diagnose crises and quickly neutralize them successfully.
A strong personality, on the other hand, is necessary to be able to say a few bitter words when the need arises. Ignorance of our character and habits can result the misreading of the signals and consequently, a worsening of our progress.
Too soft a character, on the other hand, may cause internal remorse and a desire to withdraw from the role of “supervisor.”
Let us avoid choosing for such a role people with whom a strong emotional bond binds us – otherwise, we may perceive their comments too painfully or, on the contrary, not take them seriously.
Summary
The time ahead will certainly be conducive to settling our plans for last year and creating new resolutions.
Let us make sure that they do not remain mere dreams, but that we regularly and systematically turn words into actions.
Thanks to these few simple tips, the desired effect will come easier and faster, and a concrete action plan will prove to be our invaluable ally.
