Do you want to know how to make and keep New Year resolutions? Here you go…
A new year, a new you! 2022 is here and time for New Year resolutions too. After the New Year’s Eve party is over and the champagne cocktails have been drained, it’s time to start thinking about New Year resolution ideas.
These resolutions are great ways to inculcate good habits. Additionally, the resolutions help you grow emotionally, intellectually, socially, physically, or psychologically. Making resolutions for New Year is easy but the challenge is how to keep New Year resolutions. Mostly, in three-four months we tend to abandon our resolutions and get back to the old routines or habits.
So, here are tips on how to make New Year resolutions and follow them throughout the year.
How to Make and Keep New Year Resolutions
Here are tips for keeping New Year resolutions. These ideas will help you make the most of the year. If you want to work on your financial wellness or create meaningful interpersonal connections, follow these 7 steps for making a New Year’s resolution and keeping it.
1. Be Specific with Your Goal
Most people go for resolutions such as losing weight, learning new skills, and being more productive. The smart way to be specific with your goal is to look for something more concrete realistic, and achievable.
For instance, to lose weight, commit to losing 5 or 10 pounds (as possible), save INR 5000 per month (or as per your currency), enroll in a coding class and get a certification, or cut consumption of carbohydrates for 15 days.
With such goals, it will be easy for you to accomplish them.
2. Limit Your Resolutions
A long list of New Year resolutions is a no-no. As per Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at Hertfordshire University, “Pick just one and focus your energies on it rather than spreading yourself too thin among a number of different objectives.”
It will be overwhelming to take up too much at once. Understand that synchronizing with fresh behavioral patterns and setting up new routines takes time. You have to invest sincere efforts to upkeep with them. Concentrate on one goal at a time to make it achievable.
3. Invest Time into Planning
One of the New Year Resolution ideas 2022 suggests that waiting until the last minute to select your goal is not a good idea. Be wise in choosing one. Underline the chosen goal with well-devised planning so that you can succeed in it.
Brainstorm well before starting with a new resolution. This will help you in handling any big change that the resolution brings you. It will also give you a better idea of why you have chosen it and how to be on track.
4. Start With Small Steps
Baby steps are safe, most especially when you are planning to take up habits to which you are not used. Rushing with your goals is a major reason why resolutions fail.
If you want to diet, start with a simple one. To work out, don’t push your body beyond its stamina. The mantra is not to radically alter your usual routine or behavior. It will surely derail your resolutions.
With small steps, you can easily reach your goal, no matter how big it is.
5. Learn and Adapt
If you encounter a setback while trying to accomplish your goals, in most likelihood, you will give up on your resolutions. Achieving your resolutions is challenging and doesn’t come through a straight path. Don’t take it as a failure if you relapse into your old habits. Rather, count it as learning.
Maintain a resolution journal. Mention the details in it when relapse happens, the reasons for it, and how to avoid it next time. Once you understand the underlying causes of the challenges, you are well-prepared to address those going forward.
6. Don’t Repeat Past Failures
Another strategy for how to make and keep New Year resolutions is to refrain from making the same resolutions every year. Wiseman in an interview with The Guardian said “If people think they can do it, they probably can, but if they’ve already tried and failed, their self-belief will be low.”
If you are taking up the same resolution again, evaluate your results of the previous year. What made it unachievable, what were the challenges or solutions you found for it. Alter your resolution to an extent so that it becomes easy to achieve.
Try changing your approach and you might achieve your goal this year.
7. Change is a Process
The change you are targeting took years to develop. So, don’t expect to see quick results as you work on it. Be patient. Know that following your resolution is a process, which will take time. If you go wrong at a step or miss one, you have the opportunity to start it again and set on your path to achieving it.
Even if it takes longer than expected to achieve your goals, don’t lose heart. It is not a race or a competition. This is your commitment to you. Take it slowly but passionately and dedicatedly.
In a nutshell, New Year is a new beginning and you are excited to set huge New Year resolutions as the calendar changes. But it might bring you into a situation where you have more to bite off than you can chew.
With the tips to make and follow New Year resolutions mentioned above, you can overcome the challenges of determination and willpower. Beat the odds with these 8 tips to make and follow New Year resolutions.
What is your approach to making resolutions for New Year to follow? Which tips to follow New Year resolutions do you apply?
Do share in the comments below.
