How to Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions This Year

There's nothing more cliche than ringing in the new year with heightened expectations of how awsome you're going to be; but you are awsome! So let's reach those goals.

Of all of the holiday traditions we observe, New Year’s Resolutions are the most cringe-worthy. They're worse than staying up late to swap out teeth for coins, worse than spending hundreds of dollars on Valentine flowers, it's even worse than the month-long nightly ritual of setting up that Christmas elf in new clever hiding places.

How to Keep Your Resolution, While Having Fun

If you’re already thinking about how you can get out of this year's resolutions, you might consider reflecting on the resolutions drama of previous years.

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You might notice a pattern that goes something like this, failure, disappointment and despair. But it doesn't have to be like that this year.

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Be Realistic

To have successful and fun experience with your new resolutions you don't have to plan for something dramatic such as quitting smoking overnight or never eating sugar again. In fact, it is these types of cold turkey goals that are almost guaranteed to fail.

We all feel pressured to set goals that are too big or too broad or, even worse, we set too many goals. These goals generate unrealistic expectations, they are nearly impossible to achieve. Its happened so often we can predict our utter failure, so instead of choosing something meaningful, we make resolutions we don’t really care about. 

Reaching Your New Year's Resolutions

How can you stick to a meaningful resolution this year? Well, we've got some tips.

Think positively.

Think through life changes in a positive way. For example, I would like to be more energetic rather than I feel too fat. Positivity sets the tone for your entire resolution journey.

Set good resolutions

Think about things that will impact your life in either long-term or in useful ways. For example, if learning a second language will help you get an advantage at work then it might be a better goal than learning how to Salsa.

Define the milestones

Whatever you chose make your goal simple, specific and concrete. When goals are too big or too broad, even small failures are hard to overcome.

Keep track of your progress

Most of us tend to be pretty hard on ourselves. When we have an off day or run into a setback, taking a look at the progress chart can help to re-boot enthusiasm for the resolution. Not only does it feel good to check things off the list if you get discouraged by a small setback you can look over your chart to see exactly how well you’ve done.

Accountability 

You must hold yourself accountable. This is the easiest part to sidestep. It much easier to convince ourselves that we should sleep and extra hour rather get up and go to the gym. Set up some checkpoints along the way to encourage or even force yourself to keep going.

Reward yourself

Along the same lines, it's important to acknowledge your successes. When you’ve made it one more day closer to you goal remind yourself what a good job you’ve done. Create ways for you to be joyful of even small successes.

Final take

Remember, New Year's Resolutions are a custom we chose to observe. We are not legally or morally bound to them. If you find yourself being unhappy, remember, resolutions are just a fun tradition, and feel free to trash your's, guilt-free, if it doesn't create joy in your life.

And, since NYRs should be fun, we'll leave you with this:

Disclaimer: may not be appropriate for the kiddos.