Tips to Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Stick
Use these strategies to make your habit changes last throughout the whole year and stick to your goals.
We’ve all been there before, making lofty promises to ourselves after the New Year’s Eve countdown about how we will be a better version of ourselves in the new year, only to fall short of that commitment before the spring.
If you’ve made big promises to yourself this year and would like to see real changes, here are some tips to stay on track and make those changes last.
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Craft a Clear Vision
Clearly State Your Desired Results
Simply put, you will need to know exactly where you want to go in order to create a plan to get there. Get out a piece of paper or notecard and write down your top three goals for the year for the different areas of your life.
Possible goals are the changes you want to see in your life, something you want to accomplish, what you want to be more consistent with, or anything that you don’t want to be a part of your life anymore.
Break Down Your Goals
Traditionally, New Year’s goals are a resolve to make a big life change or see an extreme transformation. They are personal goals set with the intention of meaningful change such as eliminating bad habits or completing a personal challenge.
Inherently they are hard to achieve and require a big commitment to see through. One of the challenges that hold people back with these types of life goals is not breaking down the goal into smaller, more achievable, milestones.
Better goal setting:
How to set S.M.A.R.T goals.
- For each goal, write down at least three milestone steps that you would have to achieve before reaching your final goal, save space to write below each step.
- Underneath your milestones, write at least three steps (the more actionable and measurable the better) that would help you reach those milestones.
Let this serve as a guide for you to stay accountable and track your progress.
Practice Visualization
The most powerful tool for reaching your goals is self-motivation. Once you set your mind to something, nothing can stop you. But nothing worth fighting for is ever easy.
Take the time to ask yourself the hard questions about why you want to change and the steps you’ll need to get there. Be realistic about the challenges you face and what your triggers are to give yourself grace and not get stuck in a cycle of shame and guilt.
Create a personal mission statement and write it down for motivation and mindfulness.
Examples:
- I will become healthier by making choices that are good for my body and mind.
- I will not attach my self-worth to my accomplishments.
- I will be kind to myself because I am my best friend.
- I will be more consistent with my business because even a small business can be life-changing.
- I will become stronger because my body is a temple.
- I will be more mindful about what I spend my money on because I work hard for it.
After establishing your inner motivation for reaching your goal, start visualizing what your life will look like once you achieve it. Write down how your life will change, the more specific and detailed the better!
If you are able to, create a vision board or vision movie too. Reference these materials often to help you be mindful of your “why” and reinforce the idea of change in your mind.
Watch the movie every night before you go to sleep, set your vision board as your desktop or phone wallpaper, write down your mission statement on sticky notes and place them all around your house.
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Stay on Track
There are many different strategies that you can use to stay on track. Pick which one works best for the type of goal you set or incorporate techniques from each one for a more detailed approach. Below are my favorite methods that I personally use.
Habit Stacking
It’s unrealistic to think that you will be able to motivate yourself everyday. Habit stacking relies on what our brains are already wired to do to help you effortlessly create new habits.
Simply put, this strategy requires you to perform your new habit after something that is non-negotiable in your daily routine such as brushing your teeth.
For example if your goal is to do 25 squats everyday, you could set it up like this: You would do 5 squats everyday after brushing your teeth, while waiting for the microwave, after unlocking your door, after feeding your pet, and after putting a load of laundry in the dryer.
It’s easy to see how this technique can help you create new habits with very little effort or forethought.
For larger goals or goals that require more motivation, a slower approach is recommended. This is where you will not complete the action but instead do things related to it to slowly train your brain to overcome any obstacles holding you back from preforming the tasks needed to reach your goals.
Tools
Using free tools will help you hack your goals. You don’t have to start from scratch, there are plenty of free apps and resources available to help you track your progress and stay consistent with your goals.
My favorite resources
I personally use a mix of digital and traditional planning to keep track of my goals. My favorites for digital planning are Google Sheets, Notion, and Milanote.
My favorites for traditional planning are bullet journaling, and a create my own custom discbound or ringbound planners using free printables from Pinterest or that I find online.
I would also suggest using free habit tracking apps for simple, results-based goals.
The benefits
Getting creative setting up a visual game plan for what you want to achieve can be extremely fun and motivating. When used as intending, planning and habit-tracking can help you stay consistent, gamify your goals, hold you accountable, and keep you organized.
There are endless possibilities to customize them and be as detailed as you want.
A word of caution
While these tools have the potential to be very helpful, they can also be distracting. Try to find a system that actually works for you and one you will stick to rather than one you find interesting or aesthetically pleasing.
Keep Up the Momentum
Creating a clear vision and outlining a plan to get there are important first steps, but for some goals they may only take you so far.
You will also need a plan to recover from setbacks or long stretches of inactivity, a plan to pick yourself back up if you get off track.
This is important so that you don’t get stuck in a spiral of guilt and shame after every mistake or unforeseen circumstance.
Plan Ahead for Setbacks
Small steps
One way to plan for setbacks is by writing down the small things you know will motivate you to start doing the actions required to reach your goals if you have long periods of inactivity. Reference these ideas if you get stuck in a rut.
Mindfulness and self-encouragement
Tracking habits or keeping a log of actions will come in handy if you lose motivation. Use these to reflect on the effort you spent and courage it took to work on your goals.
Re-evaluate your time and resources
If you aren’t making any progress whatsoever, you might have set too high of expectations for yourself. Rather than blaming yourself for failing to achieve something that is simply impossible for you to achieve with the time and resources available to you, re-work your goal to be more realistic.
Track your daily activities for a week or two to see exactly how much time is available in your schedule and plan to work around your free time by writing down exactly how you will spend that time to work on your goals.
Community
Don’t try to do it alone! Along with learning how to self-motivate and practice using affirmations, try to find a community that will encourage you and help you to focus on your goals. Re-enforce your beliefs and ideas for how you want your life to change by taking inspiration from others’ success or journeys.
By doing this, you can help your brain get used to the idea that you can succeed and you’ll be filling your mind with thoughts about your goal, replacing old toxic thoughts, limiting beliefs, and negative thought patterns.
Seeking community also provides a level of accountability, another external motivation factor.
If you are unable to find an in-person community or workshop that can help you reach your goals, stay connected online by finding special interest groups that are related to your goals. Free classes or communities with open discussions that you can participate in would be the most helpful.
Make Real Changes
By spending the time to get a clear vision and detailed outline of your goals, you can set up more effective progress trackers and sustain momentum. Putting in the effort to constantly be mindful of your vision, prepare for setbacks, and hold yourself accountable can help you make real changes.
Rather than setting lofty goals and not providing yourself with the resources or time to achieve them and blaming yourself for falling short, use everything that’s available to you to set yourself up for success to finally make your New Year’s resolutions stick.
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