Every year as New Year’s approaches, there’s always this feeling in the air of change. Something about the grandness of a new year, of the date on the calendar changing, seems to provoke a sense of urgency in us to crave change as well. January signals a perfect start line marker for committing to yourself, to finally taking the leap to transforming your life, pursuing your goals, and making real change. This is why every year, year after year, we continue to feel the urge to change ourselves as December comes to a close, and is also the reason why we continue to set ourselves a new list of New Year’s Resolutions time and time again, even though most years our resolutions barely make it past February.
Why is this? Whether it’s that the concept of change is simply too easy to run with and take past realistic goals, or that the excuses you tell yourself sway you into believing each year will be different, most of us wind up never actually sticking to our resolutions for a whole year.
However, what if we told you that there is a way you could create resolutions this year and actually stick to them? From key concepts like being smart with your expectations of yourself, to creating realistically achievable goals that fit within your daily life, we’re going to dive into all the factors that have the power to either make, or break your New Year’s goals, and lead you through a step by step guide to actually making your resolutions last this year.
Set Realistic Goals
One of the most important steps to setting yourself up for success when it comes to your New Year’s goals, is making realistic goals and expectations for yourself from the start. Goals such as losing 20 lbs in a week, becoming fluent in another language in a month, going to the gym every day, or cutting sugar out of your diet completely, are not realistic and will only ensure your failure. Real change, developing new habits, and learning new skills, requires time and patience.
When setting your resolutions, be mindful of what a realistic timeline for your goals might actually look like and think more about the long game rather than the short. Ask yourself what you actually want to achieve in the next year and then set goals that align with that, giving yourself the next 12 months to work towards them.
Start Small and Build
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are real changes. When it comes to your New Year’s resolutions, the key is to start small, and then slowly build up as you go. For example, if one of your goals for 2025 is to workout daily, start by committing to go to the gym 2-3 times a week to start, and then once this becomes second nature, bump it up to 4 times a week, then 5 times, and finally you’ll begin going daily without even thinking about it.
In contrast to this, if you were instead to try to go from 0 to 100, going from not working out at all to trying to suddenly go to the gym daily, you would most likely maybe last a week or two before you burnt out, lost motivation, and gave up. But by using the building method, you plant the habit into your lifestyle and let it become as routine as brushing your teeth, making it easy to continue and maintain month to month.
Make A Routine
By nature, most of us are creatures of habit, and we generally follow a certain routine every single day. In order to make your New Year’s goals last more than a week, you need to make them fit into your daily routine. It’s important to know that in general, anything new takes about 2-3 weeks to become a habit. This is why the first few weeks of trying to make any life changes are so hard, and why most people give up after only a week.
Knowing this, think of the first weeks as the adjustment period, and know that no matter how hard it seems, it will only get easier the longer you continue to maintain your goal. When implementing your new habit into your daily routine, find where it fits best into your current schedule and try to keep it at the same time every day, focusing on consistency over perfection always. The more consistent you can stay with the timing and routine of your new habit, the quicker it will become second nature.
Consistency Over Perfection
New Year’s resolutions can feel overwhelming and stressful at times, especially when your life is busy and you’re trying to add more to your already full plate. It’s important, however, to remember that consistency over perfection is key when it comes to sustaining your resolutions all year long. If you are too rigid on yourself, and expect nothing short of perfection when it comes to hitting your goals daily, it’s easy to burn out and give up, allowing yourself to believe your goals are simply unattainable.
Instead, think about the big picture: one day of not hitting your goals or missing your workout is not going to ruin all of the progress you have made, and instead of feeling defeated and just throwing in the towel because you messed up one day, get back on track the next day and continue to move forward. It's all about how you bounce back.
Make It A Lifestyle
If you take everything we talked about above, and boil it down to one key factor, it would be that when it comes to making sustainable changes in your life, it's important to realize that your resolutions for the year ideally aren’t just a temporary diet or a two week program, but are real lifestyle changes, and need to be treated as such. Understanding this is essential to successfully making your New Year’s resolutions actually last.
When you tell yourself something is only temporary, it can feel like you are simply waiting for it to be over, pushing yourself into patterns of flip flopping between giving it your all one day, then giving up and putting zero effort in the next day. To avoid this, work instead to make every part of your resolutions feel sustainable, from your original goals, to the expectations you set for yourself and to your daily routine. By doing this, you give yourself the chance to integrate your goals as a part of your everyday lifestyle and actually succeed in sticking to your resolutions.
Change is never easy, and getting out of your own way can be the hardest part. That’s why setting yourself up for success, within every step of planning and all the way to the follow through with your New Year’s resolutions, is key to giving you the smoothest path of resistance when it comes to achieving change.
Be realistic with yourself, take the time to sit down, narrow down exactly what you want to achieve, and then channel that into actionable goals that you can sustain daily in your life. When your goals are created intentionally in this way, it becomes more plausible than not for your resolutions to be achievable, and just maybe, for them to actually last this year.
