5 Tips To Stick To Your New Year’s Resolutions

Well, it’s the first week of the year. And let me first start out by saying

Happy New Year!

And I wish you all the wellness in the world throughout this next year.

Now, like I said, it’s the first of the year.

And you may want to start off by making a few resolutions to start the year off.

Whether it’s eating healthier, losing weight, stopping smoking, drinking less alcohol, reducing debt, saving money… whatever it is; there are always areas that we would all like to improve in, right?

But for many people, whether it’s the craziness of the holidays or everything that we’ve got going on during our lives, or just the busyness of everyday life during the year; sometimes it can feel like we’re caught on a treadmill and stuck in a negative loop where we just feel like we’re not getting anywhere. And we’re just struggling to get by.

And very often after the holiday season, we’re longing for the structure and the schedule of January.

But how would it feel to be consistently taking action and get repeated results, over and over again, and going from one goal to the next reaching the goals that you set for yourself?

Well, today I’m gonna give you…

5 Tips To Help You Stick To Your New Year’s Resolution or any goal for that matter, during any time of the year.

So how do you stay focused all year round and make consistent progress towards your resolutions or for any goal that you set for yourself for that matter?

Let me tell you a little bit about statistics on resolutions.

First, I’m gonna read these off for you. The first statistics says that

• 25% of people will give up on their resolution after the first week,
• but that also means that 75% are keeping them.
• And after two weeks, 70% of people are keeping their resolutions.
• After six months, about 60% of people have failed to keep their resolutions.
• Now that’s a pretty significant statistics.
• And at the end of the year, only about 10% of people keep their resolutions.

So why is there such a high failure rate for New Year’s Resolutions?

Well, the fact of the matter is that it’s just not for New Year’s Resolutions. It can be for any goal that you set for yourself throughout the year.

Now, there are some reasons that people fail to achieve their new year’s resolution. So let’s talk about some of the problems that there are, and I’ll give you some tips on how to solve for each one of them.

So the first problem is, believe it or not, that some people don’t think they can actually stick to their resolution or reach their goal.

So whether it’s insecurities, fear, anxiety self-doubt,… they’ve told their brain that they’re not going to reach their resolution or achieve their goal. So therefore they fail at achieving their goal and they give up before too long.

The First Tip then is:

Start With Your Mindset and Believe In Yourself because…

…if you start with not believing that you can achieve a goal, you’ll set yourself up for failure right away. But if you believe in yourself and know that you can reach a goal, that’s the first step to setting a resolution or to setting a goal because you want to focus on what you want, not to focus on what you don’t want.

So “Resolution” means to resolve something or to be resolute on solving something. It’s a solution. So if you focus on problems, all you’re going to get is more problems.

But if you focus on resolving or solving a challenge, then your mind will start to focus on what you need to do to resolve the challenge that you’ve been confronted with, or to be resolute in completing or achieving a goal.

And there’s a great quote that goes with this:

“Resolutions are a wonderful thing if we keep them, but many resolutions go by the wayside because we have not done anything different with our mindset.” …Monica Johnson.

So again, to set goals, to set resolutions, to work towards reaching your goals, you have to first start with your mindset.

Now, the Second problem is resolutions are not specific enough.

People set resolutions or goals like;  “I wanna be healthier this year”, or “I’d love to lose weight.”

Your brain does not know what to do with that. If you just say, “I wanna lose weight”. Well, your brain says, “Well, I wanna lose weight”. That’s great. Well, we’ll just stay here. And another three months, we’ll say: “I wanna lose weight”. And you haven’t done anything to get closer to your goal.

You have to get specific about your goals. To get specific with your goals you can get SMART about your resolutions or your goals.

And now, SMART has a double meaning.  To get SMART about your goals. You may have heard about SMART goals and that’s an acronym.

• And the S stands for Specific,
• the M stands for Measurable. So you have to be able to measure your goals and
• the A stands for Attainable
• the R stands for Relevant goals or resolutions, and
• the T stands for time bounded. And so you want to have a time limit on your goals or your resolutions so that you can have something to track by time.

Problem Three is very often, goals are unrealistic, and if your goals are insurmountable, you’ll give up on them quickly.

So the tip number three:

This Tip goes with that problem of making goals that are too big, is to break your goals down into chunks and break them down into smaller goals.

There’s a great quote by Desmond Tutu. And he said,

“There’s only one way to eat an elephant. And that’s one bite at a time. “

Now what he meant by that was that things in life can seem daunting, overwhelming, and just seem insurmountable at times, but the way we deal with them and the way that you achieve your goals is to take it one step at a time.

So if you have a seemingly insurmountable goal like losing a hundred pounds, what you can do is break that down in chunks. So you say, well, in these first 12 weeks of the new year, I can lose 10 or 15 pounds.

And I will do that by doing these specific actions and list out and plan out what you’ll need to do to lose 10 or 15 pounds for the first 12 weeks, and then you would go the next step.  You attempt to lose another 10 or 15 pounds in the next 12 weeks. That way you’re moving closer and closer to getting to that amazing goal of losing a hundred pounds.

But by doing it in sections and breaking it down into smaller goals, then you can work towards each goal logically in smaller sections and smaller bite size chunks and get there step by step.

But if you set that goal of a hundred pounds right away and just make a hundred pounds as the primary goal, then what will happen is very often, you’ll get overwhelmed and give up on the goal right away.

The next problem is, very often, people don’t track their progress.

So tip number four is:

To track yourself.

Peter Drucker said that…

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

Let’s for example, let’s say, if you’re trying to lose weight.  If you’re trying to lose, say, 20 pounds by this date.  If you’re not weighing yourself, or if you don’t initially weigh yourself, you don’t know where you’re starting.

If you don’t weigh self each week and break that down into each day, then you don’t know how your progress is and you don’t know how you’re doing working towards your goal.

If you’re not tracking yourself, you’ll give up on that goal very quickly.

Now, the next problem is that people forget their resolutions or their goals.

Now, I know this is hard to believe, but with the craziness of the holiday season or whatever time it is during the year, we get back into our normal routines and we get back into our habits and believe it or not, we forget the resolutions that we made ourselves for ourselves, or we forget the goals that we’re setting for ourselves.

Tip Five:

So what I want you to do in  is to…

…Revisit your resolution or your goal every single week.

So what I want you to do is on Sunday evening, Sunday afternoon, Sunday morning, whatever works for you? …Give yourself 30 minutes to sit down and revisit your goal; your resolution.

That way you can set yourself up for that week to plan out what are the actions that you’ll need to do to get yourself closer to reaching your resolution or reaching that goal.

Bonus tip:

I suggest you write down your goal or your resolution on a business card size piece of card stock. And you can either hand write it or type it out and print it on a home printer. And I want you to laminate it if you can, but just start with printing it out or writing it out on a business card size piece of paper. 

Keep it in your pocket, keep it in your wallet, keep it in your purse, so you can pull it out daily so that you can remind yourself of what your goal and your resolution is.

This will enhance your motivation, your desire to keep up with that goal that you made for yourself.

Remember you made this resolution because you wanted to improve some aspect of your life so that you can improve yourself from where you were yesterday.

It’s not a competition again to anybody else. You’re trying to be a better person than what you were previously.

The only competition is within yourself.

So remember, in review, to help you stick to your resolution and help you with any goal that you set for yourself throughout the year, use these five tips and I guarantee that you’ll see a difference.

• So remember,…
• Tip #1 Believe in yourself
• Tip #2 Get specific with your goals.
• Tip #3  Break down your goals.
• Tip #4 Track yourself. Make sure you measure what you’re doing.
• Tip #5  Revisits your goals every week or every day for that matter, if it works.

And also here’s a few other things to remember for the new year.

Remember,…

• Focus on your mindset.
• Believe in yourself,
• dare to set big goals for yourself.
• Work hard towards making them happen.
• Enjoy the ride.
• Be flexible.
• Don’t be too hard on yourself, but expect a lot from yourself.
• Make yourself proud.
• Be present in the moment and remember
• Focus On What You Want. Not on what you don’t want.

I hope this information helped you out!

Have a wonderful Week!

Be Positive, Be Motivated, Be Focused and Be Well,

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