New Year’s resolutions are notorious for being quickly abandoned. Embarrassingly, I doubt I’ve ever kept a New Year’s resolution for the whole year. In fact, it would be generous to say I ever even made it to February. However, this year, I’ve finally at least made it to January 31st, and I’m optimistic about the next eleven months. I’ve had to seriously reevaluate the way I think about my goals and go about achieving them, and I feel the changes I’ve made have already started to pay off. Here are my top three tips that have helped me so far:
- Set realistic goals for myself. It’s easy to set incredibly high standards when you’re only talking about making a change. It’s much harder to actually meet those standards as the year kicks into gear. I find that in the past, I’ve set goals that were crazy high for me, like getting all A+’s in a semester. Once the time comes to start achieving these goals, it becomes discouraging when they’re proven to be so difficult so quickly. I’ve found myself giving up on resolutions before January is up because it seemed like they were so impossible, I shouldn’t even try at all. This isn’t to say I don’t still aim to be ambitious, but setting manageable goals with concrete steps allows me to see progress faster and stay motivated.
- Make your goals concrete and measurable. A resolution like “exercising more” is a good start, but it doesn’t actually give you any specific steps to take. This year, I made my goal “go to the gym for at least two hours a week”. So far, this has been very manageable and easy to keep track of. To further my progress, I aim to gradually increase my hours spent at the gym month by month. Now that February’s coming, I aim to do three hours a week. Even a month ago, three hours a week would seem pretty hefty, but now I feel confident that I can keep up with it. Gradually increasing the difficulty and level of commitment of your resolutions can help you feel less overwhelmed, and clearly see how far you’ve come as the months pass.
- Be nice to yourself! It’s easy to get so caught up in your goals that you get frustrated with yourself when you don’t make progress as quickly as you’d like. In my experience, being too hard on myself has only caused me to discard my goals sooner. If you don’t have confidence that you’ll be able to achieve your goals, you won’t have the motivation to keep trying. Everyone has good days and bad days, so congratulate yourself for the good days and be gentle with yourself on the bad days as much as you can.
I hope these tips were able to help someone find some new motivation to keep working at their resolutions. Even if you didn’t make resolutions, or haven’t started them yet, it’s never too late or too early to make a change for the better. Good luck!