Exercise more, wake up early, (actually) go to your lectures; every January we make lofty goals for the new year and more often than not, we’ve abandoned them by February. Like many others, this year I set myself a number of resolutions which I’m determined to stick to. I’ve gathered a list of tips that hopefully will keep my resolutions going for at least longer than a month.
I think the first mistake that so many people make when setting new year’s resolutions is aiming too high. Let’s face it, if you haven’t even stepped foot in the gym in the past year, it’s a bit ambitious to tell yourself you’re now going to exercise three times a week. If you haven’t picked up a book since your high school English class, I highly doubt you’ll meet your new goal of reading fifty books in the year. I find that when setting resolutions, it’s important to remember that any improvement, no matter how small, is better than no improvement. If you set ridiculous goals, chances are, you’ll get discouraged and make no progress at all. So set attainable goals, they’ll be a whole lot easier to stick to. You’re not going to make a full one-eighty overnight, so be realistic about your resolutions.
I feel like this should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyways: if you fail to stick to your resolution for one day, don’t give the whole thing up. And while we’re on this topic, who says resolutions have to come into place on January 1st? It’s totally fine to start forming new habits after this somewhat intimidating date. It’s a lot better to fail once, or even multiple times, and try again, than fail once and give up completely.
My next tip is going to sound completely wishy-washy but I promise, it’s worth thinking about. When setting your resolutions, think about why you’re setting them. Chances are, the better your reason, the more likely you are to stick to it. If you’re just setting resolutions for the sake of setting them – maybe everyone around you is making plans for their incredible year ahead and you don’t want to fall behind – you’re not going to be fully committed to keeping them. Your actual reasoning doesn’t have to be incredibly philosophical or meditative, it just has to be important to you. Your new year’s resolutions are for no one but yourself, so set goals that actually make sense for you.
Lastly, don’t forget that your resolutions are ideally supposed to improve your life in some way, not make it worse; if you’re killing yourself trying to meet a resolution, it might not have been the best goal to set. No one is forcing you to set these resolutions, so remember to have fun with them and be kind to yourself.
Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash.