3 tricks to make your New Year’s resolutions stick

If you’re anything like me, you’ll agree that sticking to your New Year’s resolutions is one of the greatest feats known to mankind. It seems more and more impossible to hold our resolutions as we venture further and further into the new year. Instead of just shrugging my hopeless resolutions off like any other year, I took some time to think about what’s really causing all of this failure.

After pondering typical resolutions, I ultimately realized that a cycle of temptations constantly leads us to be more disappointed in ourselves every year. This deadly cycle completely obliterates all of our aspirations to be better people in such a short amount of time. We often plan our “year-long” resolutions so confidently only to find ourselves worse off by the end of January. Luckily, a few solutions do exist, and I’m here to share them with you.

“I’ll do it next time” and “Just this once” are some of the banes of our New Year’s resolutions. One of the biggest keys to holding onto our New Year’s resolutions is starting right away, like even on New Year’s day if you need to. Putting your goals off until tomorrow eventually turns into next week, and it only gets worse from there. The easiest way to eliminate this predicament is to start your resolution before you even enter the cycle of compromise and demotivation in the first place. Everything gets much easier after the first day of fulfilling your goals.

Personal commitments can be some of the most challenging ones, so finding a buddy or two can be very beneficial to anyone who struggles to complete their personal goals by themselves.

Involving your friends and family is a surefire way to help motivate you to achieve what you set out to accomplish. Even if you can’t find others who want participate with you, telling your friends and family about your aspirations can be a huge help as well. They’ll want to support your gym grind, healthier diet or whatever else you wish to accomplish.

Lastly, make sure that you truly want to follow through with any realistic goal that you set for yourself. Can you really blame yourself for failure if you didn’t stand much of a chance from the start? Setting achievable goals is probably the most important part about your resolution. Keep in mind that setting long-term goals requires long-term commitment. Many people, including myself, get frustrated when results don’t come quickly enough and don’t see any point in continuing. Instead of trying to accomplish too much at once, we need to take our time and set several short-term goals that lead up to a long-term one.

Also, don’t forget that it’s never too late to start a resolution. We shouldn’t even need to rely on the New Year to want to improve ourselves. Life is full of setting goals, so we’re all technically experts when you think about it. Just be sure to make your goals achievable and do everything you can to motivate yourself. Good luck on accomplishing this year’s resolutions along with the many more to come!