With the spring semester comes a new year and a New Year’s resolution. By this point, the first month of the year is almost up, which means that quite a few resolutions are beginning to fall through the cracks. But this article isn’t here to shame anyone for letting go of or giving up on their resolutions. No, we’re here to help.
New Year’s resolutions are usually year-long commitments, which means that they’re pretty big goals. While having big goals is great, the bigger the goal, the more chances there are of it being too much work for the prospective outcome. Especially with the commitment needed to keep the activity up long-term. But that’s no reason to fear your resolution. All you have to do is take the correct perspective while choosing your resolution and add some steps when planning it.
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First off, you need to pick a goal that matters to you. There are a ton of popular goals, such as being healthier, learning something new, or quitting a bad habit. Like I said before, though, these are all large goals. If you don’t care for or aren’t passionate about your goal, it’s way easier to lose your motivation. Don’t pick something just because it’s something you see a lot of people doing, or you kind of wish you could be at the end goal already.
You might be asking, then, “What if this goal would be really good for me?” Then maybe take a look at one part of the goal and pick that instead. Being healthy is a great goal, but is also way too broad to have much meaning. Think about one aspect of that goal that you really need to work on or feel is a problem. For example, instead of being healthier, make a resolution to drink at least eight glasses of water each day, or to eat vegetables at least twice per day. Instead of making a resolution to learn a new language, you can aim to recognize and use 3,000 words of a new language. Break the goal apart until you have something doable that you’re passionate about.
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Speaking of breaking things up, make sure that you carefully plan how to meet your goal. Using the above example, you aren’t going to learn everything overnight. And if you’re trying to change your behavior, it may be more productive to change it in smaller increments than all at once. This can be done by making smaller goals you can meet along the way. Start off small and build from there. If your goal is to drink more water, then you can start by drinking one glass of water a day in January. Up it to two in February, and go from there. An added bonus to this tactic is that it’s much harder to lose motivation if you feel accomplished by the small goals that lead up to the larger one!
Remember, this resolution is supposed to last the whole year, so there’s no need to rush. It’s supposed to be something fun and for your benefit. So don’t treat yourself too harshly. Instead, help yourself out along the way by doing some extra planning beforehand.