A Fresh Start
The upbeat pop music blasts louder than ever as a rich, harmonious voice announces, “It’s time for the countdown!” Hundreds of people rush to gather in a group, all simultaneously counting: “10… 9… 8… 7… 6…” The energy of the room builds, growing more ecstatic with each number. “5… 4… 3… 2.. and 1!” An exhilarating jolt of electricity fills your body from head to toe as you join in and scream, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” A cheer louder than that of a stadium crowd fills the room as you and your peers celebrate a night you’ll never forget. Happy New Year! It’s the phrase people say when the clock hits 12:00 AM on January 1st, marking the start of a 365-day journey for millions of people around the world. As the excitement of New Year’s Eve fades, many individuals turn to their yearly tradition of starting their resolutions. This a promise to an individual to either begin doing something good or stop doing something bad in their life. In this blog, I’ll explore the importance of a New Year’s resolutions and provide tips on how to follow through on them.
The Impact of Resolutions
New Year’s resolutions are much more than just a silly tradition. Depending on your success or the type of resolution, they have the power to determine the tone for your entire year. Resolutions are able to motivate us by providing a clear goal to channel our energy into a positive change. When setting a specific goal, we create something to work toward. A focus like this inspires us to create meaningful changes, whether that’s through breaking a bad habit or learning something new, overall bettering ourselves and paving the way to success. A New Year’s resolution doesn’t necessarily need to be a huge change in your life. Even setting small, realistic goals shows your willingness to change, and being willing is the most powerful first step to long term self growth. Once we start challenging the goal we set, a ripple effect in self growth happens. For example, if our goal is to stop eating fast food and we notice a positive change in our health, we’re more likely to want to continue this healthy life style. This could lead to us going to the gym more or cutting out other unhealthy habits, like alcohol or foods high in sugar. See how one goal is able to snowball into many more goals?
Why Resolutions Fail (and How to Avoid that)
Before we can figure out how to stick with a resolution, we must first understand why they fail. According to U.S. News and World Report, an estimated 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail. Lets face it, committing to something for an entire year is extremely challenging, especially for those who aren’t truly passionate in why they’re doing it. There are countless of reasons why we may lose commitment, such as creating unrealistic expectations, lack of specificity, life getting in the way, not celebrating smaller wins, lack of accountability, and many more. Looking at all these reasons, it makes sense why 80% of resolutions fail. Creating a resolution and actually sticking with is extremely hard; self growth and change aren’t things that can happen overnight. You need to truly want to change, otherwise you’ll fail over and over again. However, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible. There are just as many ways to ensure you complete your goals as there are reasons why they’re so challenging. That’s why I’ll be sharing with you a few strategies to ensure your resolutions don’t fail this year.
1. Set Meaningful Goals
It’s extremely important to set meaningful resolutions, otherwise there isn’t a point in doing them. When resolutions are meaningful, they align with your life, not only increasing your motivation but actually providing value in your life. Not everyone needs to improve their writing skills if neither their job nor any of their hobbies involve writing.
2. Set Realistic goals
Setting realistic goals is one of the most important things you can do. If you set a goal and it’s way out of your reach, it will be impossible to complete, leading to feelings of uselessness and a loss of motivation since you didn’t achieve your goal. It helps if you start small and work your way up, rather than tackling all your challenges at once.
3. Create a Plan
Planning your resolution properly not only helps with clarity but allows you to set boundaries and be able to solve problems easier.
4. Celebrate Small Wins
Celebrating small wins allows you to take a step back and really see the positive effects your new goal has brought you. Celebrating one week of going to bed before 10:00 p.m. every day might seem silly, but just a week ago, this could have been out of your reach. Take a minute every now and then to appreciate the progress you’ve made because it’s amazing, and it’s what allows you to reach your final goal.
5. Hold Yourself Accountable
Nobody is perfect, and this means that, yes, there may be a time during your journey when you fail. However, just because you fail once doesn’t mean you need to abandon your overall goal. As I said previously, you cant just make a change overnight, so failing is okay. However, make sure you are able to appropriately discipline yourself so you can stay on track with your goals.
6. Be Flexible and Adapt
Life is extremely unpredictable, you never know what may happen. Because of this, you may not be able to complete your goal as originally intended, and that’s okay. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up on your goal entirely. Just because you can’t go to the gym for an hour everyday doesn’t mean going to the gym three times a week isn’t a huge improvement from where you were before starting your goal.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, those are the best tips I can give you. However, knowing these tips alone won’t guarantee success. In order to achieve success with any goal, you need to be the one who takes action. Otherwise, nothing will happen. If you’ve read this post to the end, I highly encourage you to share these strategies with everyone you know. Who knows, you might end up being the reason someone completes their resolution.