We’ve all been there, the New Year comes along, and we get this amazing drive to create goals for the year to come. Whether it 
If you haven’t experienced it yet, make an attempt to visit a gym in the beginning of the year during the month of January, you don’t have to sign up, just observe the amount of bodies that are in one gym. Then, go to that same gym during March. Notice a difference? More likely than not, there will be a significant drop in the amount of people that attend the gym between January than March. The explanation is simple; one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is getting healthier/ losing weight. The problem is, people are naturally good at making resolutions, but not necessarily keeping them.
One of the biggest reasons for failing resolutions is the lack of drive in individuals. A lack of drive doesn’t make us bad people, but it does make us bad with goals and resolutions. Trust me, as organized as I am I sometimes find myself looking for the right motivation to keep me on top of things. I can’t begin to count the amount of times I have just wanted to sit around and do absolutely nothing, and you know what got me off that couch? That the thought that doing nothing would get me nowhere.
Here are some tips to help you not only create good New Year’s resolutions, but keep them throughout the year:
- Create realistic resolutions. (weighloss, break it up) One of the reasons why many people are discouraged when they don’t accomplish their resolutions is because they were not realistic in the first place. People set the bar so high for themselves that they set themselves up for failure. Now I’m not telling you to set lower standards, but definitely take the time to get to know yourself better and recognize what is and isn’t doable. For example, if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to lose weight, setting the goal of 100 lbs is probably not the best idea. Instead, set smaller goals, with more reachable numbers, that way you know when you are moving forward.
- Find your motivation(s).
- Find people/things that hold you accountable. So you’ve created a list of resolutions and found your motivation, now what? One of the biggest tips given to people setting goals is to tell your family and friends about them. Letting people know that you are working on something makes you feel more pressure to do it, not the bad pressure, but the good one that keeps you working on your projects. Those individuals can then also help remind you of your goals and keep you on your toes. There are also apps that can help keep you accountable. Lift, Workflow, and Hours are some of the top apps used for staying on track, and can work wonders with New Year’s resolutions.
- Make it a life resolution. Whenever I set a goal I like to think to myself… How will this make me a better person in the long run? While New Year’s resolutions are an amazing starting point for a better you, keep in mind that a year only consists of 12 months. When creating a resolution, try to make it more impactful than just a year’s worth. Using the weight loss example again, instead of simply stating “lose 50 pounds by the end of the year”, try “create a healthier diet that will help me live a happier and more fulfilling life”. See what I did there? Resolutions are a lot more fun when you stop looking at them as a job, and start to view them as a lifestyle.
Countless amounts of people around the world wait for that clock to strike midnight and mark the start of a New Year. We all want better health, more money, or a bigger house, and that’s great, but we need a starting point. A mark that says, this is only the beginning, if for you that beginning is January 1, 2015, then make sure you start off with a bang. Make it the best year possible, and remember, write down all your accomplishments, they will serve as your trophies when you look back at them next year.
Happy 2015!
