This post is all about how to stick to your New Years Resolutions.
It’s the New Year season and the lists of New Year resolutions are being made by almost everyone.
I am sure that you and I, along with everyone else, want to know the best ways to stick to your New Years resolutions.
We are all victims of the lack of motivation to complete our New Years resolution or victims to stop after a month of action.
Lucky for you, I created a list of 7 ways you can follow through with your resolutions and maintain them to the next year (or even go further than that for many more years if you’re committed. Which you should be striving for!)
This post is all about how to stick to your New Years Resolutions.
Disclaimer
This post is all my personal opinions and should not be taken seriously. I cannot guarantee that you will stick to your New Years resolution, but I can guarantee that you’ll be closer to maintaining your New Years resolutions than if you didn’t follow my tips. You, the reader, will read at your own risk and should not make any important decisions based on my suggestions. Do more research (but my advice is pretty solid I’d say). I am not affiliated with any of the companies, platforms, or organizations I list below.
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Let’s begin.
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How To Stick To Your New Years Resolutions
1. Write Your New Years Resolutions Down
The most obvious way to stick to your New Years resolution is to simply write it down.
It doesn’t really matter how you write it down but it just needs to be written down somewhere.
The main point of writing down your New Years resolutions is just so you don’t forget about it. Seeing your resolutions on paper will remind you about them too.
The options for how you write down your resolutions could be in list form, image form, video form, anything. You just need to have proof somewhere that YOU said that these are what you want to do in the New Year.
Writing out your New Years resolution is a perfect time to be creative. You are most likely out of work and school anyway so you have the time!
I like to write out my New Years Resolutions as lists in order of priority.
So, say one of my resolutions is to cut back on my sugar intake and replace it with other foods, I would put that at the top of the list. A resolution that would go towards the bottom would be to travel to 5 new locations in the USA.
Okay, the last one is pretty major and fun; however, if I compare it to my other New Years resolutions, it’s still prioritized towards the bottom of the list.
So you just have to pick and choose your order of what is important to you and what you are willing to do more consistently. Does that make sense?
Anyway, write it down!
2. Create A Plan Of Action
Next to your list of New year’s Resolutions, you should write out your plan of action.
If one of your resolutions is to exercise more, you should write down how often you want to exercise, how long you want to exercise for, and which kinds of exercise you want to train in.
For example, do you want to get into weight training? Do you want to work on your cardio endurance?
I plan on incorporating weight lifting, incorporating more cardio, and making more use of resistance bands.
When you create a plan of action, it makes your resolutions appear more attainable.
If you want to exercise more but don’t have a plan of how you’re going to do that, you’ll be spending all your time thinking about how you’re going to exercise without actually getting anything done.
So, write your plan of action down and make it as easy as possible for you to follow through.
3. Find A Buddy That Has The Same New Years Resolutions
The good thing about having New Years Resolutions or any goal for that matter is the fact that you can find like-minded people and pursue your resolutions together.
There are many benefits to having a buddy with the same New Years resolutions.
- You can do the resolutions together.
- You can hold each other accountable.
- There will be more motivation for both of you.
- Having a buddy just makes the entire process more enjoyable.
- You can track each other’s processes too.
We, humans, are really good at paying more attention to other people instead of ourselves so we might as well use that last characteristic to our advantage when it comes to benefit #5.
Obviously, you don’t need a partner to work towards your resolutions with but having someone else is always nice.
We are social creatures after all.
4. Make Your New Years Resolutions A Priority
Making your resolutions a priority is probably the most important thing you have to do to stick to your New Years resolutions.
You have to be selfish when it comes to your New Years resolutions.
Don’t let anyone get in the way of you reaching your desired results.
If they’re a good person, they would understand why you are choosing yourself over them. (To an extent, please don’t lose your job or ruin relationships because you had to say no to something trivial.)
When you make your resolutions a priority, you’re more likely to turn them into habits and therefore make them a part of your everyday life outside of it just being a New Years resolution. These habits would go further in your life instead of only being done in one year.
One of my New Years resolutions is to exercise for at least 15 minutes a day.
There were so many days I did not feel like it out of laziness but made myself do it anyway because I knew I would beat myself up for it later.
So make your resolutions a priority because you’ll make yourself much happier afterward for doing something for yourself.
5. Reward Yourself
Everyone loves a good reward.
I don’t exactly reward myself with anything other than food though so if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthier diet, don’t follow me.
Let me tell you a little fact about me concerning this point. I have this goal that I follow every year that has now turned into a habit.
It’s where I study the crap out of my notes to get as high of a score as possible. It’s half learning, half memorizing for long enough to dump it on the exam.
Because of all the excessive, maybe even unnecessary cramming that I did, my brain ends up hurting, and I kind of crash out after the exam and relax.
This is when I reward myself with a nice strawberry milkshake from Chick-fil-a.
So, the point of me sharing this story with you is the fact that because I reward myself after working hard and feeling as if I did well, I am more likely to work as hard the next time and do it all again.
Over time, I have turned myself into this machine that never does less than what should be done and gets rewarded with good results and yummy treats afterward.
Rewarding myself encourages me to keep going with the good actions and turns it into a habit.
Just be very moderate with how you reward yourself. You don’t want to give yourself more rewards than whatever it is you’re doing.
At that point, rewarding yourself would become your habit, not the work you did towards your New Years resolution.
6. Constantly Remind Yourself Of Your Desired End Result
To stick to your New year’s resolution, you have to constantly remind yourself of your potential result.
If we go back to the list you made, you should add another section that details where you want to eventually be.
Don’t make it a goal that you reach and stop though. Make it a reminder to reach your desired point and keep working to maintain your results.
If you constantly look at that column of your New Years resolution list and constantly think about where you could be one day, you’ll gain more motivation to keep going.
The only way you’re going to get there is if you keep going and stay consistent.
I think there is no point in pursuing a goal if you don’t have a result in mind.
You need a place to go for you to know what to do and how.
7. Choose One New Years Resolution
If you really want to know the big secret tip for sticking to your New Years resolution, then you should know that you should only have one new years resolution.
Okay, well maybe not only one but make your list as minimal as possible.
Not only will you feel less overwhelmed, but you’ll see your list as more doable too.
If you had a list of 3 resolutions and a list of 10 resolutions, you’d probably choose to do the list of 10 right?
That’s because the list of 10 has more and makes you feel as if you’ll be more productive when you check off lots of items on a list.
But if you look deep into the contents of the list of 3 and the list of 10, you’ll see that the list of 3 is centered around the 3 resolutions that are most important to you.
Everyone knows that not everyone’s resolution list is completed.
People either only do the important ones or only do the least important ones. Very few people do both.
Therefore, I want to remind you that you don’t need a big list of resolutions.
The smaller your list is, the more targeted your goals will be.
With more targeted goals, you’ll get larger results than the completion of 10 smaller resolutions.
8. BONUS: Tonya Leigh’s Way
You guys. I will never stop referencing Tonya Leigh’s School Of Self-Image.
I have yet to join her community, but until then here is me promoting her and sharing her wisdom with you all.
Definitely check her out. Learn about her New Year tradition of choosing a word of the year instead of making a list of New Years resolutions.
You might have to go on Apple podcasts or Google podcasts to find it but she does it every year around New Years. So it cant be too hard to find.
She’s such a role model. No joke.
Ending Note
Wow! What a list.
I am in the process of creating my very small New Years resolution list and am making a mental note to try really hard to maintain these goals.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn but I am will likely be referencing back to this amazing post to remind myself of the many great ways to stick to my New Years resolutions.
What do you think? Are these good ones? Are there more? Let me know!
But other than that, I hope you have a great day, a happy holiday, and have great quality time with your loved ones!
This post was all about how to stick to new years resolutions.
Nidhi Thakur says
Finding a buddy that shares my resolution, wow!
That’s cool advice. I guess I’m going to find a buddy for my next year’s resolution and that’s to – learn to play guitar.
Wish me luck! 🙂
Lily-Anne says
Thanks for reading and Good luck on your learning journey!
I tried guitar once and my fingers were actually dying. I haven’t picked up a guitar since. But I know that if I had kept going, my fingers would have sucked it up and gotten used to it. I might pick it up again one day. Who knows
coffeamall says
such beautiful pics and sentiment…thanks for the ride:)
coffeamall | https://www.coffeamall.com
Lily-Anne says
I’m glad you liked it!
diyshowercurtain says
I’m sure there are great things to come.
https://www.diyshowercurtain.com
Lily-Anne says
Thanks for reading!
Lily-Anne says
Thanks for stopping by!