How to persevere in New Year’s resolutions?
At the end of the year most of us makes summaries and plans their activities for the upcoming year. They are sure that this time they will definitely maintain the New Year’s resolutions. At the same time, after about 3 weeks, a large group of people abandons their plans and give up what they decided to achieve. Until the next year, of course, when they often do almost the same. And again, nothing comes out.
How to persevere in New Year’s resolutions?
Most od us focus on what to do to maintain regularity of new activities. Only why doesn’t it work anyway? It is worth going one step back: the basis for good performance is always skillful planning.
How to plan New Year’s resolutions?
1 | no more than 2 „big things”
It’s nothing difficult to write a million things to do the next year – after all 365 days are so many! The thing is that mostly it is unachieavable. Do you want to keep the resolution? Plan a few things only. Certainly one will be more difficult, other easier to do. So make sure that there are no more than two „big things” on the list that require a lot of effort or are time-consuming. Thanks to this, the New Year’s plan will not overwhelm or discourage you.
2 | distribution in time
Do not start everything at once. In this way you will lose your energy quickly. Take a calendar, think about how much time you have in a given month/quarter and whether you actually are able to embrace everything at a time. Plan the days when you deal with the given thing. Perhaps it will be easier to start with the implementation of one resolution and when you already introduce one habit, you will start implementing another one. This is one of the best prescriptions on how to maintain New Year’s plans.
3 | expanding current goals
Think about whether it is worth planning to develop some of the previous skills or activities – for example, achieve a more advanced level. It is easier to persevere when we already have some experience, routine or achievement in a given topic.
4 | reasonable goals
How much the goal is real? Awareness of your capabilities and time (sometimes money) will allow you to plan the implementation more practically. For example, if you are slower learner when it comes to foreign languages, do not plan „at the end of the year, I will be fluent in German”, and instead choose „At the end of the year I will communicate in German quite good.” You can always level up if things go well.
Also take into account the time needed to make habits – it is usually 21 days, but it’s just statistics. This means that one habit you can get ina a week, another – in half a year. [More on this topic can be found in the book The Power of Habit]
