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Technically you have three weeks to figure out how to improve your life seemingly overnight through New Year’s resolutions. These goals won’t create themselves. More than 60 percent of people will elect a resolution to help them ring in the new year with some positive changes. If you’re one of these people, you’ll need to spend a little time trying to figure out not only which part of your life needs improvement, but how to implement a plan so the change will stick.
If you’re not sure where to start, the most top resolutions for 2018 were the following:
- Eat better — 37 percent
- Exercise more — 37 percent
- Spend less money — 37 percent
- Self-care (i.e. getting more sleep) — 24 percent
- Read more books —18 percent
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Planning Ahead
Planning ahead means you’ll have the next three weeks to consider what you want to improve in 2019. Not only that, you can pull together a plan so that you can successfully keep your 2019 New Year’s Resolution. University of Scranton research says that only 8 percent of people keep their resolution. If you don’t want to be one of the 92 percent of people who abandon making a life change, you need to start with a plan and organize it into achievable steps by priority and sequence.
Personalize Your Goal
After preparing ahead of time, the next best way to ensure you’ll keep your 2019 resolutions is personalizing your goal. So you know you want to eat better. Now get more specific. To implement a better diet, elect to eat less meat during the week. An easy way to do this is introducing Meatless Monday into your routine. A lot of time we leave our resolutions really broad, which makes them hard to achieve. So instead of saying you want to spend less money, make a resolution to live on a budget that will save you a specific amount of money each month. Really, achieving goals is about turning negative behaviors into positive habits.
Incorporate Your Resolution Into A New Habit Loop
Many people drop the ball and abandon their New Year’s resolution because they don’t change how they live. You’re the “imagine-er” of your own life. If you’re not painting a new reality, nothing will actually change. This means, target your weak points and replace them with something better. For example, if you want to drink less, replace after-work drinks with working out.
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Charles Duhigg, author of The Power Of Habit says habits can be broken down into three parts: the cue, the routine, and the reward. In this case, the cue is the time after work when everyone meets up at a bar. You’ll ditch your time on a barstool with working out. Doing this will create a new routine associated with the time of day you’re most likely to drink. The reward, in this case, will be the natural high that comes from working out. It takes 21 days to form a new habit, so be diligent. You can achieve your goal, creating a better life in the process.
Are you one of the 8 percent of people who’ve successfully adopted a New Year’s resolution? If so, what made you successful? Let us know in the comments!
