Top Tips for Sustainable New Year Resolutions

What would be different for you if your New Year Resolutions were sustainable? Would you have a sense of achievement and accomplishment? Would this lead you to bringing other changes into your life? What impact would this have on your self-confidence?

Sustainable New Year Resolutions are within everyone’s reach, by following a few simple guidelines as shown below.

1. Balance ambition with reality.

It is important to achieve the right balance between a goal that is challenging and one that can be achieved. Often, when setting New Year Resolutions, we tend to set ourselves goals that are both rigid and overly demanding e.g. to go to the gym every day. When we fail to achieve these goals, we become disheartened. As this happens it becomes easy to focus on all that we have not achieved at the cost of overlooking everything that has been gained so far.

2. Track your progress.

Actively tracking your progress, in a journal, chart or a goal-setting app, helps you to stay focused and on track. This could be as simple as marking on a calendar every day that you take the required action. Although this activity may not seem to add weight to your motivation, by creating a streak or run of success over several days you will find that you will become quite resistant to breaking that streak, even just for one day.

3. Actively seek support.

By engaging with others working towards similar goals, you will find that your personal resolve and drive will be strengthened. Effectively, you are then working within an environment or culture of success focused on your shared objectives. If, in the future, there should be an occasion when you find yourself lacking in personal motivation then the commitment and enthusiasm of your support group will carry you forward.

A second way of seeking support is by enlisting professional help e.g. a coach or mentor. There is a great deal of learning and knowledge to be gained in working with someone who has travelled the route successfully before you.

4. Find an accountability partner.

When you have an accountability partner your goal stops becoming yours alone. It then becomes the focus of regular, shared discussions. Your accountability partner will also be invested in your progress. They will be a strong support to you both in sharing the successes that you achieve and helping you to reflect objectively on the times when you have not moved forward.

5. Share your resolution with friends and family.

When you share your resolution with friends and family you are then building a culture of support for yourself. Additionally, the actions of your friends and family may change in support of your new goal. This can be extremely helpful e.g. not offering you sweet foods following your commitment to eat healthily. In this way, potential conflicts of interest can be overcome without your needing to sacrifice progress towards your goal to meet others’ expectations.

6. Plan small steps to success.

By defining small steps to achieving your goal you will not only find it easier to identify progress but also discover that it remains easier to continue to work towards the major goal even when it still seems relatively far away. For example, there could be thirty or more small steps between your current level of fitness and your aim to run a half marathon. By solely focusing on the major goal it can be easy to overlook the very real progress being made towards it on a day to day or week to week basis.

7. Spend time each day focusing on your goal.

This activity can help you to maintain your focus and strengthen your resolve towards goal achievement. You may choose to focus by spending time tracking your progress, planning your next steps, or writing, reading or speaking affirmations that support your chosen outcome.

8. Accept discomfort.

To create a significant change in your actions or behaviour it is necessary to embrace a certain level of discomfort. As Roy T Bennett once said, “Change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Unfamiliarity necessitates an initial level of discomfort until, through time, the unfamiliar becomes familiar. It may be the discomfort of breaking away from an old habit or the discomfort of having to become a beginner once more in a new area of learning and development.

9. Know your why.

The critical aspect here is the word “your”. It is not enough to have a goal because it is “a good thing to do”. To maximise your commitment to your goal and your personal investment in its achievement you need to define why its achievement is important to you. This is an area that many people overlook to their detriment. Membership of a gym or health club is a good example. To join a gym in January to increase your fitness levels is a worthy goal but unlikely to be easy to sustain unless you have a clear vision of the positive difference that increased fitness levels will bring to your life.

10. Keep going.

Whilst you may not manage to remain on track every day it is the cumulative effect of your repeated practice and commitment that will enable you to reach your goal. An occasional lapse is like tripping on a pebble whilst out walking. It is not ideal, but it is certainly no justification for abandoning the walk and going home.

Do you have a significant goal that seems just too big to achieve on your own? Did you know that hypnotherapy can help you in its achievement ?

To find out more, why not contact me today ?