New Year’s is coming up soon and with it come New Year’s resolutions. Many people make them but most fail to follow them for more than a month or two at most. I think I have some ideas as to why that is as well as practical suggestions to help you succeed in keeping your resolutions. It probably seems strange to talk about New Year’s resolutions before Christmas but, as usual, there is a method to my madness. Here are some things I’ve done (mostly unintentionally at first) that helped me succeed where many others, including myself in previous years, have failed.
My first recommendation is to make your resolutions either long before New Year’s celebrations begin or well after they end. It’s easy to think about the next year and the fresh start it offers and plan to improve a lot of things. After the festivities cease and your regular life resumes, however, it becomes much harder to keep that optimistic spirit of change going. So try to avoid beginning any major changes during highly emotional times of your life, whether those emotions are positive or negative. If you start making changes during a normal time in your life, then it’ll be much easier to break old habits and create new ones that’ll help you move toward your goals; once you develop good habits, you’ll be on the fast track to the life you want and willpower becomes much less important to getting you there.
Next, work on one thing at a time. If you have a lot of things you want to change in your life, trying to do everything at once can be overwhelming and I suspect that this is one of the primary reasons many people fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions. Think about the things you want to change, order them from most to least achievable, and tackle the one that is the most achievable. Maybe it’s the easiest, least expensive, quickest, etc. Whatever the case, work on that one first. Because it’s the most achievable, you’ll have a better chance of completing it than any other item on your list. And when you begin, find a way to gradually incorporate it into your life. For example, if you want to go to the gym 3 times a week, get a gym membership and start by just going there to do a simple workout or even just a warm-up. Once you’re in the habit of going (which you can facilitate by giving yourself a reward after each gym visit), slowly increase the intensity of your workouts until they’re where you want them to be. This way, you’re taking a small first step in the right direction and adjusting as you go instead of biting off more than you can chew. You can do the same for each change you want to make. Starting off with a small victory gives you a sense of accomplishment and confidence that makes it easier to then take on the next most achievable thing on your list, and so on.
Something else that should help is surrounding yourself with people pursuing the same goals as you. If you have enough of them, there’s a good chance that some of them are further along than you are and can offer you pointers on how to get started or what to do next. Beyond assistance, there’s just something powerful and motivating about being around people who are driven to better themselves and their lives. Spending time around them causes some of that motivation to rub off on you, and that may be the thing you need to get going. Doesn’t matter how clear your vision of a better life is or how solid of a plan you have to get there if you can’t bring yourself to do it; if you can’t find that motivation in yourself, find it in the people around you.
As with many of my other posts, I have some books to recommend that relate to my points. These are just a few of many books that I’ve read this year but they’re the ones that I feel have been the most helpful. The first one is The Power of Habit. Since most New Year’s resolutions that I’ve heard involve habits (such as spending more time at the gym), understanding how habits work and how to change them is useful for creating lasting change. This book gives a great breakdown of the science behind habits and clearly explains how to make good use of this information. Another great book that talks a lot about habits is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This is definitely one of my top 5 books and may even be in my top 3. It has a lot of great stuff about interacting with other people, using your time effectively, having meaningful relationships, rescripting yourself, giving yourself what you need in all areas of your life, and so on. If there were a how-to guide for life, this book would be a strong contender for it. The fact that its two indexes make it so easy to find useful information in a fairly long and densely packed book is one more reason to include it here. Next in line, The Four Agreements is extremely useful for getting along with other people and freeing yourself from negative thinking. I don’t follow the agreements as much as I should, but whenever I do, my life becomes much better and much easier. This is a quick read but it’s still full of great information about what to do and how to do it.
On the subject of thinking, there is The Power of Now. Negative thinking is a huge problem and a lot of negative thinking is caused by thinking too much. This book shows you how to turn off your thoughts, settle your mind, and live in the present instead of dwelling on the past or dreading the future. Before I learned and started practicing the principles in this book, I had only ever experienced brief moments of true peace. A this point, I can usually get into a state of peace and presence without too much trouble. I find myself listening to this book periodically as a refresher since it’s done me so much good. And the last book I’ll mention here is 12 Rules for Life. It offers a lot of good ways to think about life and about yourself. One rule, “Make friends with people who want the best for you”, ties in with my point about people pursuing the same goals as you. I had heard this idea long before I ever read the book (one of my high school principals articulated it this way: “Your friends are like elevators. They will either take you up or they will bring you down.”) but the book offers a good reminder; alternatively, it may be the first time some people hear it clearly articulated and explained. Either way, this is just one of the many good tidbits in that book.
I mentioned in the first paragraph that I came across most of these things unintentionally. Before this year began, I don’t recall making any New Year’s resolutions. For me, 2017 ended much better than it began, so I had a lot of positive momentum carrying me into 2018: a better job, better financial situation, good people all around me, etc. I’m sure all of those helped me start off this year on the right track. I also first heard about and listened to The Power of Now last year, so that also helped me enter 2018 with grace. Because I’ve always been a curious person with a thirst for knowledge, I spent a lot of time this year reading different articles and books and listening to a lot of online videos. That is how, along with book recommendations from friends, I discovered a lot of the resources and information I included in this post. I didn’t start off looking for it; early on, it just seemed to come to me. Once I noticed what was happening and began actively pursuing it, everything started making sense and falling into place. Now that I’ve spent a lot of time studying and practicing this stuff, I can reverse engineer what I’ve done and share it with you. To close, thank you for reading this long post. I hope this all makes sense and helps you as much as it’s helped me.