7 Tips To Help You Stick To Your New Years Resolutions

New year, new beginnings. The new year represents for many, an opportunity to reinvent themselves. It’s like we’re recharging again! And all this energy to live the year ahead translates into things we look forward to achieving, in other words, New Years resolutions.

The most common New Year’s resolutions are losing weight, quitting drinking or smoking, saving money, exercising, getting a job, traveling, and finding love. But the thing is that these purposes many times remain, just that, purposes … and nothing more.

Has it happened to you that your purposes are generally the same, year after year? If so, do not worry because in this article I am going to share with you a series of tips that attack, precisely, the most frequent mistakes for which people do not fulfill their New Year’s resolutions.

2021 was a year that brought us many challenges and difficulties worldwide and that is why it is important that 2022 be a year that gives us back that desire to live and to become a version of ourselves that we are proud of.

So take note of these super tips to fulfill your New Year’s resolutions!

1. Create SMART purposes

Fulfilling a New Year’s resolution begins right when you formulate it.

If we create our purposes under the methodology of SMART objectives, we will be preparing the ideal ground for them to come true.

SMART is an acronym for the following English words: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Sensitive , which means that each purpose must be:

• Specific: avoid making your purpose too vague or copying someone else’s purposes, it must be specific to you.
• Measurable: think about how you can measure that purpose or how it can be quantified.
• Achievable: it must be realistic and adapted to your circumstances. Setting unattainable resolutions will only discourage you and you will end up giving up.
• Relevant: Reflect on the real reason why you want to fulfill that purpose and why it is important to you. Many times we set goals in order to meet the expectations of others and not because we really want to.
• With a certain time: clarify what will be the period of time in which you want to see progress or fulfill it in its entirety. It is advisable to divide each macro objective (the annual purpose) into smaller objectives that eventually lead to it. These micro goals can be daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Each of these requirements respond to the main causes for which the New Year’s resolutions are not fulfilled. So, if you do your SMART resolutions from the beginning, you will be starting on the right foot.

For example, the typical purpose of “saving more money”, doing it SMART would look like:

Save 15% of my salary each month so that on December 31, 2022 I have saved a total of $ 45,000 Mexican pesos.

This purpose is specific because it is adapted to the salary of the person in question. It is measurable because we are specifying what percentage will be saved monthly and the amount of savings that will be had at the end of the year. It is achievable because if unnecessary expenses are avoided this is what could be saved month after month. We could assume that it is relevant for the person because with that money they will go on vacation to the beach which is something that makes them feel good, relax and unwind from work. And finally, specifies how long should save that percentage, which is this case is monthly.

2. Find purposes that motivate you

This tip goes hand in hand with the relevance feature above. It is about finding purposes with a reason for being and whose motivation is deep and not superficial.

For example, a superficial motivation may be to lose weight, but what you should ask yourself is why do you want to lose weight:

To like someone else? Why do you want more likes on Instagram? Why do you want to be able to wear those miniskirts when you go out to the club?

If so, you are basically doing it to look good to others and to win their approval, but if you do it more well because you want to feel good about yourself, be healthy and have more confidence in yourself, then these are the reasons. that you should always keep in mind: your real motivation.

Your purposes will be as strong as the motivation behind it , so if it is something external to you, you will most likely end up abandoning it. On the other hand, if it is something that connects with your being, that is truly important to you and that moves your heart, then you are on the right track.

“When you feel that you are not productive, it is not necessarily because you are lazy or because you have bad habits, it is because you are not working on the right project or you have not found one that intrinsically motivates you and that is meaningful to you.” – Adam Grant

3. Keep them in mind and carry out frequent reviews

January is the month of the year where New Year’s resolutions are most present, but once the first month of the year passes, they tend to be forgotten …

What to do so that this does not happen?

Simple: keep them in mind and carry out frequent revisions.

For this it is important that you capture them in a place that you see daily and that, at least once a week, analyze what you did to get closer to your purpose and if it worked or not, and based on this, plan your actions for the next week.

According to experts, the best way to capture your New Year’s resolutions is in writing because they are better recorded in the memory and in the unconscious, but you can also capture them in images, as a collage, and make a wonderful vision board or board. inspiration that you have on your desk or on a wall in your bedroom.

There are other people who write them on sticky notes and stick them on their mirror to read every morning. Or you can even make a wallpaper on your smartphone in which you express your purposes.

In the same way , it is very important that there are spaces in your agenda to carry out each of the actions that bring you closer to your purposes. What is not on your agenda, is not fulfilled. That easy.

Another reason it’s super helpful to monitor your progress regularly is because it gives you that sense of accomplishment that motivates you to keep going.

4. Don’t get saturated with purpose

Although it may seem tempting to have multiple purposes, the reality is that in practice, the fewer the better, because you will have much greater focus . In addition, there will be more years to fulfill the others.

1 to 3 purposes is recommended, but if you think you have the capacity to add a couple more, go ahead. Just remember that each purpose demands its due time and attention in your weekly schedule and we do not want you to saturate yourself.

A good idea that I found online is to set goals that cover different spheres of your life . For example, one may be a professional, another a personal health and wellness, and yet another a financial.

5. Make an action plan for each purpose

“A goal without a plan is just a wish” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ”

The purposes are to be fulfilled and the ONLY way they are fulfilled is by doing something about them.

Spend the first days of January thinking and analyzing how you can fulfill each of your purposes and what your action plan will be, step by step. The more specific and detailed you can be, the better.

You may need to do some research on this and consider different methods to achieve this, selecting the one that is most akin to your personality.

Then, think about how you are going to incorporate those actions or activities to fulfill it into your daily routine. Remember that what is not on your agenda, is not fulfilled.

In the same way, anticipate possible challenges and difficulties indicating how you would do it in case they arise.

Something that works very well is being self-critical and reflecting on why those same resolutions were not fulfilled last year and what was missing to achieve them; and this time, do things differently or adapt your purpose.

“Successful people are not afraid of failure because they understand that it is necessary to learn and grow from it” – Robert Kiyosaki ”

All this planning and initial anticipation is key for your purpose to become a reality day by day. So put everything in its place to make this happen!

6. Celebrate your achievements and enjoy the process

Big successes are formed by achieving small victories.

Pampering yourself and rewarding yourself as you progress is a great way to stay motivated and enjoy the process.

Incentive schemes work wonders for not abandoning the process. For example, if your purpose was to lose weight, every time you lose 2 kilos, you can do a cheat meal ( eat something that you have a craving and that your diet did not allow).

Try not to see your purpose as a burden or as a duty, but as something that you really want to do because of what it represents for you, –as we mentioned in the second point where we talked about having a real motivation that connects with you.

Remember, first of all, your happiness is more important than your achievements .

7. Get an Accountability Partner

An accountability partner is someone to whom you are accountable and who helps you maintain your commitment and fulfill your goal, or in this case, your purpose.

It can be a close friend, a family member, or your partner. The fun thing about this dynamic is that you too can serve him or her as their accountability partner and thus both support and motivate each other in the process of making their New Year’s resolutions come true.

Now that you know these tips to fulfill your New Year’s resolutions, it is time to put each piece in its place and prepare the perfect setting so that this year they are achieved ??

Do not leave your New Year’s wishes to chance, the lamb of abundance or the red panties for love (or yellow for money). These charms don’t make dreams come true; but determination, effort and perseverance, yes.