The New Year is an excellent opportunity to take a fresh look at life. It is a time when we can resolve to make real changes to our life. However, sometimes it is easier to create resolutions, rather than actually make the lasting change. As we create new year resolutions, we also need to work out how we can make it part of our life long change.
What Good Habits Do you Need?
The key to New Year resolutions is to choose ones that you really need. Take an honest look at your life and decide where it could easily be improved. Often it is small issues and minor irritations that can spoil our day. For example, do you easily get angry for the smallest provocation? If that is the case make a resolution to control your anger. Often we don’t think of simple things like this, but, if we can resolve to improve in areas like this it will make a big difference to our quality of life.
What do You Wish to Achieve in 2008?
If you know what you wish to achieve, then work out the kind of resolutions that you will need. Be bold and willing to follow your heart’s aspirations, don’t just think of small changes – think how you can make a real difference to your life. Be prepared to make resolutions to aim for a completely new goal and change of life.
Give Them Importance
The success of new habits will depend upon how much importance that we give to them. What we value is given our energy and attention; if we constantly remind ourselves of our new targets and goals we will become more motivated to fulfil them. But, if we are not careful, habits can slip from our attention and therefore, we fail to make the change permanent. In this regard, it may be better to have a small number of resolutions that you are really going to work on, rather than a long list of speculative resolutions.
Make Them Public – Share Your Goals
One way to give a higher importance to your habits is to share them with other people, such as family and friends. Once other people know what you are aiming for there is a public pressure to try harder. This can be important for certain habits like losing weight. To successfully diet, it needs the support of those who buy and cook food in your family.
Work Out How You are Going to Make it Stick
New Year Resolutions are not just about deciding on some aims, we need to also decide how to make them work in the long term. If you have a new year resolution to get fit, work out the types of exercise that you will actually be willing to do. Create time for exercise; get the right equipment and, if necessary, subscription to the local gym. If you have resolved to have better relationships with your partner, work out several things that can easily make an improvement to your relationships – and make a real effort to be considerate.
Progress Not Perfection
Another tip is to choose new year resolutions that are realistic. New Year resolutions do not mean that you have to become perfect; aim for progress rather than perfection. Make it a habit to continually strive to better yourself. Aim to minimize anger rather than eliminate it completely. Exercising 3 times a week may be more realistic than spending 10 hours a week in the gym.
Choose One
This is said to be the most effective way of getting a New Year’s resolution to work, just choose one.
Photo by Unmesh, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Great post! I think that planning is the most important part of achieving any goal. If you line up all the steps necessary while you’re super-motivated to accomplish the goal, then all you have to do later is follow a list. That’s a lot easier than waking up every day feeling guilty that you haven’t taken a step towards “saving money” or “losing weight” yet.