Making Your New Year's Resolution Stick
By Jody Bell
Each January my social media pages become flooded with gym photos, lists of dream colleges, study plans, and so many resolutions I could drown in them. Seeing this growing up meant that by the time I was in high school I was obsessed with New Year resolutions– the concept of reinventing yourself, completely changing routines, and forming healthy habits because the calendar says so. So, like clockwork each New Year's Eve I would make a list of 25 tangible and specific goals I would want to achieve in the next year. This ranged from specific colleges I wanted to attend, businesses I wanted to start, and grades I hoped to achieve. I was fixated on making such specific resolutions that the outcome of my efforts was black or white – I either completed my goal, or I didn’t. Sometimes this worked great – I knew exactly when I could celebrate completing a goal. But, it also meant that if I didn’t complete those goals, I crashed and became incredibly unmotivated thinking I was a failure.
We’re already over a week into January, and you may already be feeling a bit overwhelmed by some of those resolutions you set out to achieve. Well, here’s the good news – you can always make resolutions. Just because the calendar says it’s a new year doesn’t mean that’s your only chance to make goals for yourself. In fact, we should constantly be working towards self improvement – not just narrowly focus on it in January and then give up by February.
So, if you’re feeling that you may need to take a step back and make some modifications to your resolution to make them more sustainable, you’re in the right place. Below are our top three tips on making your New Year's resolutions realistic, sustainable, and a catalyst for self-improvement.
1. Value progress over perfection
Each year as I planned my goals, I only glorified the end result – the outcome of the resolution.
Whether this was a specific fitness goal, GPA, or college acceptance, I focused so narrowly on this long term result that I completely misrepresented what I actually needed to do to achieve that goal. Instead, I should have been visualizing and valuing the everyday work that goes into making my resolution a reality. I should have praised myself for staying late to study, for walking that extra block even if I couldn’t run it, or even taking a chance and applying to the colleges that I knew were a bit of a long shot. That’s what it truly looks like to work towards your goals – that’s progress.
What’s necessary is a mentality change – instead of fixating on the end result of your goals, reward yourself as you create a path towards it.
2. Build in ways to measure progress
Focusing on progress can be difficult, which is why you need to think of some applicable ways to measure it.
This could be anything from achieving certain homework grades (as opposed to midterm grades) to keeping a daily health journal so you are more in tune with your changes. Not only does this help you focus on progress over perfection, but it also gives you more gratification as you visualize yourself getting closer to your goal.
If you’re someone who likes more of a challenge, set these goals up to be achievable in the short term, but something that is a bit out of your comfort zone. Alternatively, if you know you get discouraged easily, set many small goals that you feel very confident about. In both scenarios you’re working towards the same general goal, but you’re able to personalize your approach in a way that fits your needs.
3. Don’t try and reinvent yourself – focus on small changes
New Year's resolutions give us a chance to fantasize a completely different version of ourselves, and makes us believe that it’s obtainable.
Well, the good news is it probably is obtainable, but the bad news is your brain is programmed towards instant gratification. With social media, technology, and the ever increasing pace of the world around us, it becomes hard to stay motivated when you don’t immediately reach your goals. This, mixed with visualizing your end goal but not the small steps needed to get there, could result in a crash and burning of your New Year's resolutions.
Instead, while focusing on measurable progress, consider making resolutions that contribute towards a larger goal, but aren’t massive. There’s pressure to constantly be changing and evolving – especially in high school. But, understand that’s not realistic – we can’t turn ourselves into someone authentically reinvented in a year. All we can do is find ways to focus on self improvement and growth; once you understand that that’s the core of New Year's resolutions, you’ll find it much easier to stick to your sustainable goals.
Jody Bell, 20 is Girls With Impact’s Editor in Chief and a program graduate from Greenwich High School. Girls With Impact is the nation’s only online, business and leadership program for girls 14-24, turning them into tomorrow’s leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators.