How to Stick to Your New Years Resolutions

It’s when the common saying “New Year, New Me.” is thrown around again. Although it is a heavy cliché and carries a sarcastic undertone, it simply just expresses our collective intentions of actually accomplishing the goals we fail to stick to in the previous years.

Whether to lose some weight, quit smoking, or reduce social media usage, creating these New Year’s resolutions motivates us to help achieve our goals. New Year’s resolutions can hold a negative sense and can come off as pointless, but these tips on how to stick to your resolutions will make accomplishing them more realistic:

Think Short Term

This may come off as odd as many of us create goals to change our entire lifestyle rather than just a tiny part of our lives, but it can be more beneficial to think short-term. The transition from short-term goals to long-term ones is much more attainable and practical. As we may already know, long-term goals are challenging to stick to, so starting with short-term goals produces a time limit that creates a strong incentive.

Start Small

Try to come up with straightforward resolutions and ones you can see yourself keeping. For example, if you want to be more active this year, you can solely change your mode of transportation. Walk more often throughout campus or ride a bicycle to work, rather than sitting in a car. Eventually, this goal will become a habit, and you can start to aim for bigger goals slowly.

Share Your Goals

Sharing your goals and resolutions with others can be more effective. Talking about your goals with people you feel comfortable with forms a more encouraging perspective. By doing so, you are creating a support group, which makes the experience much more accessible. For example, you have people you can talk to about an accomplishment or when struggling to move past a bad habit. Overall having a support group makes sticking to resolutions less stressful.