It’s January 1st, a brand new year has begun, with fresh goals and lots of great ideas on how to improve your life. Lose 20 lbs, join a gym, start dating, get to work on those projects, and hobbies you have wanted to work on for years (or decades in my case). For all of us, we plan and start with the very best of intentions, then a week passes, two, and suddenly all the changes, hopes and dreams for the new year fade away. We have all been there, we have all done that.
So how do we make sure to stick to our New Year's resolutions? It’s not easy. A lot of our daily habits form without much thought; we get used to doing things a certain way, and changing that unconscious habit is hard. Here are a few things you can do to increase your chances of success.
- Write down your goals. The easiest thing to do is write down what you want to achieve, change, or do this year and put it on a wall or somewhere visible (by your desk or beside the bathroom mirror). You want to make sure that it won’t get lost, covered up, or mysteriously disappear. You want to ensure that you look at it every day.
- Be specific. Often, we don’t achieve our goals for one main reason: they aren't specific enough. We write down “exercise” or “go to the gym”. What we need to write down is “Monday, Wednesday, Friday – 6 pm, go to the Gym, run for 20 minutes.” Much more specific, and much more likely to go do that. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to do it.
- Triggers. Every action we take is triggered by something. We eat because we feel hungry (or feel snacky), so we go to find food (or eat our nephews halloween candy). We feel tired at night because it gets dark outside. Something, an action, or an external stimulus triggers a habitual response in us in turn. One thing that can help is to create or link a trigger to the change you want to make. For example, when work ends, instead of going home, you go to the gym; when you wake up, you go work out. One action caused the next.
- Don’t sit down or stand up. Sedation kills motivation. If you find yourself sitting down when you get home from work and then can't motivate yourself to do anything, it’s because you sat down. Don’t believe me? Then give it a try. The next time you get home from work, don’t sit down for the first hour at home; you will find that in that hour, you are far more productive and achieve a lot more than you usually do. If you find there are things to do, and you can’t convince yourself to do them, persuade yourself to stand up first. It’s hard to be motivated to do anything once you have sat down.
- Goals and the reason why. Be clear when you are making these new year resolutions with what your goals are, do you want to run a marathon this summer, do you want to look good in your wedding photos, do you want to be able to climb the stairs without being out of breath, whatever it is, be clear with why you are following your New Year's resolution. When we don’t have a “why” to drive use, it can be hard to maintain consistent motivation.
It often takes about 6 months for new habits and routines to form fully; as a result, over time, following through will become a little easier each time you do it. These five tips should help you achieve your goal in the coming year, whatever it may be. It can be hard to go through it on your own, so finding a friend, family member, co-worker, or even a therapist to support and guide you can help.
By Andre Stam, RP, CCC, OCT, is a psychotherapist who specializes in sleep, teacher support, burnout, anxiety, and depression. He has training in CBT. CBT-I, DBT, SE, and Narrative therapy.
