Did you know: the official day people abandon their New Year Resolutions falls on the second Friday of January every year? This day is known as Quitters Day. This year, Quitters Day was on January 13, 2023. That is less than two weeks into the New Year. Funny enough, there are 52 weeks in a year meaning for the remaining 50 weeks, people have given up on their resolutions. That is, until nearing the end of the year, people feel like they need or want to change for the new year and try to think of some new year resolutions. As a result, this cycle tends to repeat every year. If you want to actually work on your resolutions but struggle to, here are some ways you can work to maintain your new year resolutions!
- Reflect and Revisit
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Since it is already February, long past Quitters Day, you may have realized that you may have quit on your new year resolutions. The first step to maintaining your new year resolutions is to reflect and revisit them! Are they still a priority to you? If not, what is a priority to you now? Whether it be prioritizing work, physical or mental health, relationships, etc. Reflect on your previous weeks or the past month. Try to figure out when you stopped prioritizing your resolutions. What came up?
- Keep, Change, or Re-prioritize
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After reflecting and revisiting your resolutions, decide if you want to keep them, change them, or re-prioritize them. You are free to change your mind. If you want to start focusing on relationships more than physical health, that is totally fine! Rank your resolutions and see which ones you want to prioritize.
- Visualize how to make it happen
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Once you have figured out your priorities, start thinking about how you can start making them happen. For example, if you want to eat healthier, what can you incorporate into your routine to start? It doesn’t have to be something super drastic from your usual routine like meal prepping every week if you normally don’t or cutting out something like cold turkey. It can be skipping on a Starbucks frappuccino every now and then or cooking more veggies with your meals! Once you visualize how you can start incorporating your goals into your life, they will feel easier to start and continue them!
- Make small changes
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Reiterating the “super drastic” part. When you are goal-setting, realize that you don’t have to make 180° changes! It can be hard to maintain these goals when they feel so far-fetched. However, if it’s a smaller change that you can incorporate, it will seem more manageable and won’t feel as intimidating to start or maintain. With these small changes, you can work up to your overall goals. For example, if you want to work on your relationships and “be more social” instead of focusing on making new friends, why don’t you try to check up on an old friend, say hi to your neighbor, or call your mom or dad more often! Often, we feel that we have to look outside of our life to incorporate our goals but a lot of it can come from our own lives. By strengthening our relationships with people within our lives, we are still fulfilling our goals and also forging emotional connections.
- Get started
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After creating and visualizing these goals, just start! Do it at your own pace and at your own potential. This is the easier part because your passions should help motivate you!
- Celebrate your wins
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Celebrate your wins! Show yourself gratitude even if you think it is something too small to celebrate. At the end of the day, you made it through the day and you can celebrate that! By showing yourself gratitude, you’ll feel more accomplished and motivated to continue goal setting and acting towards them.
- Don’t quit
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Lastly, don’t quit! I know it’s easier said than done but just because you “fail” to incorporate your routine one day does not mean you have to stop completely. For example, if you incorporate three new goals into your day and forget or miss one in the morning, it doesn’t mean you can’t do the remainder of the two or vice versa. If you say you’ll just “start tomorrow”, you can lose track of your resolutions again. Starting and maintaining your resolutions does not have to be perfect. Don’t let yourself fall into the cycle of “failing” and starting tomorrow! If you ever feel like you are forgetting about your resolutions or prioritizing other things, do a check-in and reflect. Do you still want to continue prioritizing this aspect of life or are you now more interested in doing this? Adjust as needed and keep going! It’s not about being perfect but as consistent as possible.
I hope you found these tips helpful! I am not going to lie. I am one of those people who forget my new year resolutions. However, with these tips, I have renavigated and reprioritized the aspects of life I want to focus on. We are all humans who can be very, very busy! However, I hope you guys are able to somewhat maintain your resolutions. You’ll feel grateful for yourselves at the end of the year for doing so! Have a wonderful rest of the year.