How To Make New Year’s Resolutions That Stick
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I gave up on New Year’s Resolutions years ago. I felt like all I was doing was participating in mass self-dilution. Every January people start to live up to their oaths they swore before all their friends and Twitter followers, but by February the gyms are empty (as are they candy shelves) and cigarette sales seem to go up.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
I’ve realized that the reason we often fail at our Resolutions is because we keep going about them the wrong way. These Resolutions always seem to be dead set on doing (or not doing) something flawlessly from January 1 through December 31.
The problem with this is that we’re flawed. We Make mistakes. We aren’t perfect.
So, when we expect perfection from ourselves like this, what happens when we mess up? We give up, and why not if we’ve already blown the mission. If one mistake means we’ve failed, then once we’ve messed up we might as well stop trying so hard and wait for next year to try again.
If we are going to succeed at our Resolutions, we need to start thinking about them differently. Here are a few suggestions for setting Resolutions that stick.
1. Start with the end in mind. Rather than insisting on perfection from day one, make the resolution something that you want to be a reality by the end of the year. This changes the focus from short-term (the next action) to long-term (the trajectory throughout the year). This way your resolution isn’t blown by one mistake, but all the days you stick to it are progress toward the end goal.
2. Set S.M.A.R.T. resolutions. I wrote a post about S.M.A.R.T. goal setting when I first started blogging, and it is a tool I use a lot. Many of the “Resolutions” we set are floppy and immeasurable. We say we want to “lose weight”, but not how much, we want to work out “more,” but we don’t say how much. When we get specific about setting realistic and measurable goals that have a set time frame our odds of success go up exponentially.
3. Put your money where your mouth is. Make an investment into your Resolution. This doesn’t have to be a financial thing. If your Resolution is to run a marathon, then sign up for one at the end of the year, put it on your calendar, talk about it with friends and family. Once you do, you’ll feel a lot of social pressure to follow through on your Resolution. Knowing that people you care about are going to be asking about how the marathon was does a lot to motivate you to actually run it.
This year, for the first time since high school, I’m going to set some resolutions. These are some things I want to accomplish by December 31, 2014:
1. I resolve to follow through with my 52 Week Challenge
2. I resolve to have a book manuscript at least in the editing stage
3. I resolve to grow this blog to 1,000 unique monthly visitors (I’d really appreciate your help with this one)
When we change the way we look at Resolutions and the way we prepare for them it makes a huge difference in making them a possibility. What are your New Year’s Resolutions?
