If you have a pattern of setting intentions at the beginning of a New Year and then abandoning them a few days later, I have five life hacks to keep you on course.
Change Your Mindset
New Year’s resolutions can be incredibly enriching and self-improving if you find a way to maintain them throughout the year.
Here are some life hacks for keeping your resolutions:
1. COMMIT – You must be willing to make a strong commitment to change to be successful in your resolutions. Believe that you can and will accomplish what you set out to do.
• Choose New Year’s resolutions that you genuinely want to achieve.
• Tell everyone you know about your resolutions. When everyone knows what you’re setting out to achieve, they can help hold you accountable.
• Plan ahead rather than choosing your resolutions at the very last moment. Make resolutions that follow your values and not someone else’s and focus on the positive aspects of achieving them.
2. BE REAL – Have realistic expectations. If you set the bar too high, then you also set yourself up for failure, which can be profoundly de-motivating for you.
• Aim realistically, rather than too high. Give yourself a challenge, but not so much of a challenge that you end up setting yourself up for failure.
• If you plan on setting similar resolutions as last year, consider first and foremost why last year’s resolutions failed.
3. JOURNAL – When you put your resolutions into writing, you make them real. You put your commitment down on paper. Put your goals where you can see them, in written form, so you won’t forget what you’re setting out to achieve this year.
4. PLAN – Articulating what you intend to achieve this year is a big part of setting resolutions, but planning how to achieve them is an entirely different story. Write down a plan for each resolution you want to achieve rather than merely hoping for the best.
5. FLEXIBILITY – Avoid allowing rigid resolutions to throw you off track if something doesn’t go quite how you planned it. Try to predict what challenges you may face, and create a contingency plan for those challenges just in case.
Bottom Line
You can keep your New Year’s resolutions if you do a little bit of planning and preparing ahead of time. Like any goal-setting process, the key is to be realistic about your goals and the challenges you may face in achieving them. The more practical and flexible you are, the more likely you’ll be to achieve your goals.
