3 Strategies to Keep Your New Year Resolutions
Ignore them and wait until next year.
Do you make new year resolutions each year but fail to carry them out?
At the eve of every New Year, most of us dream big, set goals, and make resolutions. For years, we make new resolutions beginning each year, but soon the enthusiasm subsides, the motivation plunges and we cannot keep up with the resolutions. As the celebratory mood of the new year dies along with that fades our will to keep resolutions too.
Each year the resolutions get carried forward like a yearly ritual with a promise to ourselves that next time it’s going to be different. But it never is.
My dream was to improve fitness, read more books and travel widely. I tumbled, stumbled, fumbled but succeeded in the end.
If you feel you have been in my shoes before, failing to keep new year resolutions or you are planning to make resolutions, you will save a lot of pain and frustration by following the advice.
Why I failed to follow up on my resolutions was due to lack of a strategy. To successfully achieve my goals, the strategy had three major strands:
* Choose your own goals.
* Prioritise your goals
* Form a habit
Strand # 1 Choose your own goals
Don’t choose others’ goals. If you get influenced by what others are doing and copy their goals, you will only be a copycat. Don’t choose goals which are socially acceptable, or your close group of friends and family will approve.
You should not pursue or abandon your goals just because you are afraid to face up to the world, looking people straight in the eye, telling them that this is what you want to achieve.
“Some goals are not going to fulfill you. Choose goals that you value and care about.”
Henry Cloud
If you choose the goals set by others, you will never be passionate about it. You will soon get bored and give up because your heart is not into the thing you are doing. You will do things half-heartedly. When you do things half-heartedly, it is a no brainer that you will not achieve your goals.
Strand #2 Prioritise your list of goals
Are your goals too many? You are all fired up, charged and raring to go. You want to do it all and you want to do it in no time. You do not realise you are trying to do too much in too little time. Remember you can do anything you want, but you cannot do everything you want.
“Organize and execute around your most important priorities.”
Stephen Covey
List your goals in order of priority. Choose one or two which you can do comfortably. Are you willing to forego something else in your life, while adding something new? Would sacrificing something else be worth it? For instance, if you stop exercising to read more books, it may not be worth the trade-off.
Packing too many things in the schedule will soon stress you out. Introduce only one new thing at a time.
Strand #3 Form a habit
Whenever you are trying to do something new, you need to do it often, making a habit out of it. Keeping a resolution is trying to do a particular thing every day. Unless it becomes a habit you cannot do it daily. Soon you will break the habit and off goes your new year resolution.
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you are inspired or not.”
Octavia Butler
To form a habit, start small and put a process in place. Prefer consistency over intensity. There is no point in doing too much of a thing on one day or putting in herculean effort one day in a week and not doing anything for the remaining days.
Working in fits and starts and in intense spurts does not lead to forming a habit. When something becomes a habit, you do it unconsciously effortlessly without your will. This becomes a self-perpetuating virtuous cycle.
Once you master a given activity, you can afford to work in intense sporadic sessions.
You would have noticed that all these strategies provide the right direction.
The specifics of each situation would differ depending on the context. If the direction is wrong, then no amount of hard work matters. It is like rowing a boat doubly hard but in the wrong direction. All the hard work takes you away from your goals rather than being near to reaching them.
Enthusiasm, will power and motivation are no substitute for a poor strategy. When I failed to implement my resolutions and when I succeeded, on every occasion my intent was sincere and resolutions were the same.
The difference was in execution. I could execute only because of the right strategy. These three strategies are the only ones you need to keep your new year resolutions.
Be strategic, execute, and keep up your resolutions.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
