How to follow through with your New Year’s Resolutions
New year’s resolutions (for those who don’t know) are goals you set for the new year. These are things you hope to achieve to better your life and ensure your next year is better than this year.
For most people, new year’s resolutions don’t last past the first month of January or even past the first week.
It can be really demotivating to get to the end of the year and realise that you never followed through with your goals.
Why do we fail to carry through with our new year’s resolutions?
Laziness
My first and foremost reason is laziness. We humans love comfort. Anything that deviates from a life of tasty unhealthy food, lots of sleep, couching on the sofa or procrastination is exerting ourselves too much.
Our brain is comprised of a logical component that does the analysis and knows what’s good for us. It’s the part that sets the goals and wants to make your life worthwhile. The good guy.
Then there’s the chimp part of our brain that doesn’t like discomfort. It is the part that prevents us from achieving our goals. The bad guy. It tells us that we are ok. Just eat that food, you can go to the gym later. Just sleep an extra hour, you need it. Just couch on the sofa, you’ve been working all week. Just procrastinate, you don’t need to be doing stuff all the time.
The good guy and bad guy are constantly fighting and most of the time, the bad guy comes out as the winner because it was the part of our brain that evolved first. It is older (but not wiser).
This bad guy is responsible for us being lazy in the name of avoiding discomfort.
Work Life Balance
If you are living in a first world country like the UK and work in a city like London, let’s face it – there’s rarely enough time to do things for yourself.
Most of the time is spent in travelling to work, working, travelling back home and then doing chores and taking care of your family. Weekends are also spent doing chores.
There’s barely enough time.
Tiredness
Along with the lack of time due to work, there’s also the aspect of tiredness.
If you are working 5 days a week, you’d probably be too tired to do anything else.
Unless work is one of your goals, it’s pretty difficult to have the energy to do more.
Loss of Focus
Sometimes, you just forget those goals you had set for the new year.
You get caught up in life and just end up going with the flow.
Financial incapability
You may have set goals such as travelling or even buying a house but may be unable to do so as you can’t afford it.
Certain things are beyond our control and as we saw in the pandemic, a lot of people lost their jobs.
I’m sure there are many other reasons as to why people are unable to follow through with their new years resolutions.
How do I follow through with my new years resolutions?
So how do you ensure that you can follow through with as many goals as possible through the new year?
Create a vision board
I love vision boards because they give you an instant snapshot of your goals and what you want in life. You don’t really need to tax your brain with trying to remember what your goals are.
A vision board is a collection of images that represent your goals or what you want in life.
You need to place your vision board where you can see it every day.
A vision board has two advantages:
-It helps keep your focus and always reminds you of your goals
-It motivates you when you are feeling lazy or demotivated
You simply need to write down your goals somewhere and then find images that remind you of them.
Want to buy a house? Try to find a house online that looks exactly like the one you want to buy, print out its picture and stick it on your vision board.
Want to travel to Spain? Find a picture of a Spanish town or even something that reminds you of Spain like a flamenco dancer.
Stop Thinking, Start Doing
We fail to get on with our goals because of procrastination and laziness. Believe me, I know, because I’m still prey to this.
I like to wake up earlier to practise yoga and meditation but on some days, I just don’t want to get out of bed. My brain starts making excuses like you need this sleep, you’ve been working so hard etc. I start thinking about other things and before I know it, one hour’s passed just like that.
We need to train ourselves to stop thinking about things and just do it. E.g. in the example above, I just need to get out of bed as soon as I’m awake preventing my brain from having the time to think about it.
Another example is that you may want to go to the gym and your brain starts making excuses such as it’s cold outside, get some rest, you can go tomorrow etc. Set a time that you want to go to the gym and when it’s that time, don’t think about it, just go. Almost become like a robot programmed to do certain things.
I suppose you could call this disciplining yourself to achieve your goals.
Motivate yourself constantly
Another way to ensure you follow through with your goals is to find ways to motivate yourself constantly.
E.g. one example is to create a vision board.
Another way is to read motivational quotes or books if you’re looking for success at work for example.
If you want to get fit, you could look at pictures of people who have the body type you are trying to achieve – maybe place a picture where you can see it.
Celebrate your successes
Often times, we forget to celebrate our successes. We fail to congratulate ourselves for doing so well and end up in a boring vicious circle of life.
Celebrating successes, no matter how small they may be, will motivate you to keep going.
E.g if you hit your loss weight goal for the week, treat yourself with a cheat meal (ofcourse don’t over do it such that you lose all the gains).
If you progressed at work, go out with your friends and enjoy that night out.
Another thing I would suggest is to create a box in which you put notes of your successes – both small and big. We tend to forget about the small things so writing them down is a good idea. Whenever, you need motivation, simply pull out a note and read it. It will remind you of your achievements and keep you going.
Find friends who will keep you accountable
If you are doing something alone, it only takes your chimp brain to convince you that it’s not worth doing.
Having friends who keep you accountable or want to achieve that goal with you will help you progress.
Friends will force you to get out and do it. If you are feeling demotivated, they’ll encourage you. Having someone by your side while you are trying to achieve your goals also helps a lot.
Set exact deadlines
Setting deadlines keeps you on track. Knowing that you need to achieve something by a certain date will allow you to plan and decide what needs to be done when.
If you don’t set a deadline, your brain will tell you that you have enough time to achieve your goal later and it is not a priority.
Setting deadline puts the goal in motion and you start taking action rather than being passive.
Find information
When you don’t know how to do something, you may decide to put it off for a while until you figure out how to do it. This may lead to forgetting about your goals or just being lazy.
Look for information constantly, whether it is through reading books, attending seminars/workshops, meeting up with others who have the same goals or watching tutorials online.
If you are constantly getting information, it allows you to move forward as you know what to do next. You develop new ideas and are also motivated to keep pushing forward.
Find a way to create time
As I mentioned above, living in a fast paced city may make it difficult for you to find time for other things.
But there’s always time. You just need to change your priorities.
Watch one less hour of netflix. Get a better job that gives you more hours. Don’t sleep in on the weekend. Use your time wisely while travelling to work.
Overcome tiredness with a better lifestyle
Working will always be tiring. However, you can find a way to be less tired.
Perhaps you could skip those nights out drinking with your work mates and instead get a good night’s rest.
You could change your diet to eating healthier which can sustain you longer.
You can start exercising to stay fit and give you that energy boost.
I’m sure there are many ways that you can improve your current lifestyle to ensure that you are less tired.
Find more ways to make money and save up
If financial difficulties are preventing you from achieving your goals, then you need to find a way to make more money.
Apart from your job, start side hustles.
This could be starting up your own small business, trading in stocks, investing in property etc.
Instead of spending money eating expensive dinners out, start cooking at home and save up.
You can find ways to cut spending e.g. spend less on designer clothing.
How to ensure you follow through with your new years resolutions into 2022
I hope the tips above are useful to you and help you to follow through with your new years goals in 2022.
I’m sure there are so many more ways to help you achieve these goals and I would love to hear what you do to follow through with your goals. Please do comment below.
Here’s wishing you a happy new year. May next year be full of joy, good fortune and goals achievement 😀
