How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

Say goodbye to 2017, say hello to 2018.  If you're like me, you take an opportunity to reflect and make some goals to improve yourself mentally, socially, spiritually and physically.  This post focuses on strategies to turn your good-intentioned resolutions into real, life-changing habits.

Here's a bit of trivia regarding making and keeping fitness-related New Year's resolutions, according to Statistic Brain.

• Losing weight was the top New Year's resolution for 2017, with around 21% of Americans making goals in this area.
• 44% of those who make resolutions actually manage to keep them longer than 6 months.
• 38% of people in their twenties achieve their resolutions, whereas only 16% of people over 50 do.

Are we doomed to failure?  If you're like me, resolutions are usually made with the best of intentions, but they quickly fade into the background and become forgotten.  

Here are some of the main reasons why people don't keep their resolutions, according to Psychology Today:

1. Lack of preparation.  You make resolutions as a way of motivating yourself, but you aren't ready to change your habits, particularly bad habits.
2. You have unrealistic goals and expectations.  
3. You don't understand the relationship between cause and effect.  You may think that if you lose weight, or reduce your debts, or exercise more, your entire life will change, and when it doesn't, you may get discouraged and then you revert back to old behaviors.

Here are some tips for successfully changing your behavior, again according to Psychology Today:

1. Focus on one resolution, rather several and set realistic, specific goals. Losing weight is not a specific goal. Losing 10 pounds in 90 days would be.
2. Don't wait till New Year's eve to make resolutions. Make it a year long process, every day.
3. Take small steps. Many people quit because the goal is too big requiring too much effort and action all at once.
4. Have an accountability buddy, someone close to you to whom you have to report.
5. Celebrate your success between milestones. Don't wait the goal to be finally completed.
6. Focus your thinking on new behaviors and thought patterns. You have to create new neural pathways in your brain to change habits.
7. Focus on the present. What's the one thing you can do today, right now, towards your goal?
8. Be mindful. Become physically, emotionally and mentally aware of your inner state as each external event happens, moment-by-moment, rather than living in the past or future.
9. And finally, don't take yourself so seriously. Have fun and laugh at yourself when you slip, but don't let the slip hold you back from working at your goal.

Personally, I find my greatest success when I focus on a single thing at a time and I put some time into it to plan for success.  I also don't go into it with the thought of making a short-term change, but I try to figure out how to make this a permanent change and part of my daily routine.  If I have to wake up each morning and figure out how I'm going to achieve that goal I've already failed, because some days I will feel more motivated than others.  I also like to educate myself about the goal and read or listen to podcasts about people who have been successful.  Basically, I need to create a framework for success. That's how I ultimately was able to lose 75 pounds and I'm trying to take the same thought patterns to other parts of my life.

Good luck on your own efforts to change your life for the better, and may 2018 be your best year ever!