Date in Ireland: 28 Mar 2024

New Year’s Resolutions

Today, mainly because of the time of year, I will discuss how to keep your New Year’s resolutions and how to pursue your objectives effectively.

If you are reading this essay, I will assume that you are going to begin your annual attempt to improve something about yourself or try something new. Regardless of the intended improvement, keeping new year’s resolutions will, for many people, be difficult and doomed to failure, just like last year’s ones.

Traditionally, New Year’s resolutions are set at the very end of a year and intended to begin at the beginning of the following year. They most often begin beautifully, but few of them are ever completed; they stay as empty promises and unfulfilled ambitions. This need not be the case, as there are techniques to help you to attain and fulfil your New Year’s plans and objectives with as little discomfort as possible.

So what do you think?

Do you have a New Year’s Resolution or two for next year? Do you want to learn how to keep your New Year’s resolutions and eventually reach your New Year’s goal?

Of course you do, but do not fret; it is not as difficult as you may believe. It all boils down to how you approach your resolutions and objectives.

Seriously. How a goal is pursued is as crucial as the objective itself: if you follow these three stages, you will be that much closer to achieving them.

1. Encourage Yourself: When making New Year’s resolutions, it is essential to motivate yourself and stay motivated. Too often, we make overly ambitious New Year’s resolutions, only to fail to achieve them or even come anywhere near to achieving them.

Successful individuals understand how to pursue a goal and have a compelling rationale for keeping their New Year’s resolution. If keeping your New Year’s resolve is at the top of this year’s “to-do” list, you must be committed to completing it especially if you’ve settled on a long-term goal, such as weight loss.

Try to reward yourself with something other than food when you have lost x number of kilos. Additionally, once every week, look at yourself in the mirror and congratulate yourself on your improvement. Make an effort to see yourself not as a failure but as a successful person who can achieve goals and get things done. This will help. You will after a time notice that others will see you differently too.

2. Make Realistic Resolutions and set Goals for Their Achievement: When you have a long-term goal, such as increasing your finances or reducing weight, you will find that it is far easier to attain smaller goals that will gradually move you closer to your main goal. Using short-term goals is like climbing a ladder. It is so much easier to climb one step at a time knowing that before too long you will reach the dizzy heights that you are aiming for. So, break your resolution down into manageable stages. Then tackle each stage one by one. You will get there.

3. Write Them Down: Not only should you write down your resolutions, but you should also place the paper where you will see it every day. Out of sight is out of mind, so keep your list of resolutions or goals, long or short, where you will see it every day. Every day, remind yourself of your resolutions. Remember to reward yourself for every goal achieved and for maintaining the level achieved.

In fact, keeping a journal of your successes would be a great motivator. On the days when you are tempted to crumble, just open your journal and look back at your efforts and the successes they produced. You will be amazed at the results. When everything is presented in black and white, it appears more genuine and urgent, and you will feel obliged to carry out your New Year’s resolutions.

Remember that achieving and maintaining new year’s resolutions is not that difficult if you make a plan and really commit to making your plan a reality by following these three steps. This could be your year, when you manage to change your life by setting an achievable set of goals that will get you to where you want to be.

Take the time to decide on an achievable New Year’s resolution and get started on attaining it immediately. Then the following year you can build on this success. How do you eat an elephant? (sorry animal lovers) You eat it one bite at a time. You are unlikely to be able to achieve your main goals in one go. So, take smaller steps that move you closer to your overall goal.

Example New Year's Resolutions

The photo above contains a fairly typical set of new year’s resolutions. Of course, yours may be different, but there are three big ones on the list, numbers 1, 4 and 7. These are good examples of ones that you will probably need to tackle one step at a time, but they may both be tackled concurrently. You can aim to lose a certain amount of weight per month and the money saved on food and cigarettes can help to reduce your credit card debt.

But remember that just because you fail to give up cigarettes on your first attempt does not mean that any other part of your list automatically also crumbles. Think of your plan and what you will have achieved by this time next year. But if you do feel that you have failed in any way, don’t beat yourself up about it. Be nice to yourself. Encourage yourself and try again.

By the way, if you are reading this at any other time of the year, don’t let the date be an excuse for not starting your resolutions. You can implement these steps at any time of the year. Just make a plan and resolve to implement it. That’s it. Now, what are you waiting for?

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