6 Ways To Keep Your New Year's Resolutions
New Year’s Resolutions can be hard to keep. However ambitious your goals for 2020, the excitement of a new year can quickly give way to overwhelm by mid-February. Here are six practical ways you can ensure that you follow through your New Year’s Resolutions this year.
1. Create habits, not goals.
It can be easy to veer too general or aspirational when you’re setting goals. Habits, on the other hand, are smaller, more specific and more action-oriented in nature. This year, shift your resolution from “I will exercise more,” to “I will go on a run every morning when I wake up” and see what happens.
2. The more specific, the better.
New Year’s resolutions have a higher success rate the more specific they are. If your resolution is “I will go on a run every morning when I wake up,” add, “I will go on a 30-minute run every morning when I wake up.” This way, you will know exactly what kind of commitment this resolution would require.
3. Ease into it.
Like any habit, it is important to ease into new behaviors to make them stick. If your resolution is “I will go on a 30-minute run every morning when I wake up,” try establishing benchmarks to achieve your 30-minute goal. For example, you can set your goal at 15 minutes for the first 3 months, 20 minutes for the next 3 months, then 25 minutes for the next 3 months.
4. Evaluate your “why”.
Resolutions that are borne out of fleeting trends, a sense of obligation to another person, or external factors like societal views have a lower success rate. Think about why you want to achieve your goal, and what it means to you. Why are you pursuing this goal? How will it improve the quality of your life?
5. Visualize the end goal.
Taking the time to visualize your life once your resolution has been achieved reinforces the goal and reminds you why you are pursuing it in the first place. If your resolution is “I will go on a 30-minute run every morning when I wake up,” imagine what your life will be like once running becomes second nature and you are more healthy and fit.
6. Treat yourself.
New habits are difficult to form. Dividing the habit up into benchmarks and establishing rewards at the end of each benchmark makes it a little bit easier. If your resolution is “I will go on a 30-minute run every morning when I wake up” and you have set up benchmarks every 3 months like you did in step #3, reward yourself at the end of every 3 months with an outing or a self-care ritual.