3 Simple Ways to Restart Your New Year’s Resolutions

On January 1^st, most people find themselves making New Year’s resolutions in readiness to tackle the New Year. You must have promised yourself a number of things. For example, you might have told yourself that you will do things differently this year and even swore to stay committed to ensuring that this resolution came true. Unfortunately, until now, you have done nothing to achieve this goal.

It is essential to point out that out of all the people that make a New Year’s resolution, approximately 92 percent of them fail. Truthfully, 43 percent of the individuals who make New Year’s resolution never make it past January, and out of the people who do make it past the first month, 80 percent of those people never make it until summer. If you are finding it hard to stick with your New Year’s resolutions, here are tips to help you:

Define Your Goals 

The first and most important step in achieving your resolutions is by defining and understanding your goals. You need to clearly understand what you want to be your New Year’s resolutions. Once you have defined your resolutions, the next thing is to evaluate the resolutions. Evaluation here means to clearly look into the goals and find out if they are realistic and achievable. For example, you cannot have “being rich” as a resolution yet you do not even have a job. Your goals should be guided by the S.M.A.R.T goal setting principles, which entail the following:

S – Specific, significant, stretching

M – Measurable, meaningful, motivational

A – Achievable, agreed upon, action-oriented, acceptable

R – Realistic, reasonable, rewarding, relevant

T – Timely, trackable, time-based, tangible

These principles should guide you on coming up with goals you can achieve. To make it easier to come up with achievable resolutions, you should categorize them into six distinct categories: family, career, wealth, health, faith, and intellect. Write down your resolutions in order to remember each and every one of them.

Have a Plan

Once you have defined, evaluated, and written down your resolutions, the next step is to have a plan. A plan in this case means setting up actionable tasks that you will be doing each and every day that will enable you to move closer to achieving your goals. It involves the steps and strategies that will guide you into attaining your resolutions. For example, if your resolution is to lose some weight—let’s say 10 lbs.—by June 1^st 2017, the following are strategies that you can use to ensure that you achieve your ultimate goal:

• Complete high-intensity impact training (HIIT) for 30–45 minutes daily.
• Reduce your daily calorie intake to at least 2,000 calories each day and eat a minimum of 30 grams of carbohydrates per day. 
• Drink a green smoothie for breakfast every morning.

The above example is measurable and trackable. To make it more fun, you can keep a score on how you perform each day. This will enable you to know whether you are progressing, retrogressing, or staying in the same position.

You can download the Plan on a Page worksheet to enable you to define your goal, build an actionable plan, and keep your goals before everything else.

Keep Your Vision in Front of You

When making resolutions, most people make them in their heads, and few actually take their time to write them down. Unfortunately, the few that write down their goals do this once a year. You should not be in this category of people. If you want to meet your goals, ensure that you write them out twice daily. Doing this will ensure that you stick to you plan and ensure that what you want to achieve is the most important thing in your life.

The best way to ensure that you are determined in achieving your goals is by writing the resolutions on a piece of paper. You can also purchase the Happier Mind Journal that will remind you of what you need to do every day as you progress towards achieving your objectives. Avoid using the digital method because that can become boring and may make you stray from the right path. Keep the paper or the journal where you can easily see it no matter the time of day. This will always remind you of the things you need to do.

Very few people achieve their New Year’s resolution. Most of them lose focus and drop out along the way. However, setting and achieving such goals are important elements in one’s life. It gives you the feeling and ambition to do more.

Get yourself back in line and work towards achieving your goals for the year.