Reasons Most People Fail at Their New Year’s Resolutions (and How You Can Beat the Odds) 5Who doesn’t love getting a fresh start? For many people, January is the perfect time to shake off old vices and create some positive new habits. But good intentions don’t always translate into actual change. By February, the majority of resolution-setters have abandoned their new goals and fallen back into their old ways. Why does this happen? There are a number of common reasons why most people don’t stick to their New Year’s resolutions. If you make one of these mistakes, you’ll probably find yourself giving up on your resolutions, too. 1. NOT BEING REALISTIC Shooting for the moon isn’t always the best strategy. In fact, sometimes it can prevent you from even getting off the ground. Realistically, almost no one can learn a new language in six months or become a runner overnight, but many people make overly-optimistic resolutions like these every year. If you’re too ambitious with your New Year’s resolutions, you’ll end up getting burned out before January is over. 2. MAKING TOO MANY RESOLUTIONS Even small resolutions can be hard to keep if you make too many of them. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if you try to change more than one or two habits at a time. Besides that, making a lot of different resolutions is a sign that you haven’t put much thought into each one, and it’s easy to give up on resolutions that aren’t meaningful to you. 3. NOT SETTING SPECIFIC GOALS If your resolution is something like “lose weight” or “get better grades,” you aren’t likely to succeed. Why? Because these goals are vague and hard to track. Useful goals are specific and measurable - for instance, “lose 10 pounds by March” or “get an A in calculus.” 4. NOT MAKING A PLAN Along with a specific goal, you need a plan. How are you going to turn your resolutions into reality? Many people fail at keeping their resolutions because they don’t turn their goals into specific action steps. 5. GIVING UP TOO SOON Perseverance is important for forming any new habit in your life, but many people throw in the towel on their resolutions as soon as something goes wrong. It’s important to stay flexible and to avoid getting discouraged too quickly, even if your resolutions are tougher to keep than you thought they’d be. Adjusting a goal to be more realistic is better than giving up on it completely. How Can You Beat the Odds and Keep Your Resolutions? Failing to keep New Year’s resolutions is very common - but the good news is that it’s not inevitable. A minority of people do stick to their resolutions every year, and if you’d like to be one of them, there are some things you can do to increase your odds of success. 1. SET ONLY RESOLUTIONS THAT ARE MEANINGFUL TO YOU. If you don’t really care about your resolutions, you won’t stick to them. Avoid choosing this year’s resolutions based on what you think will impress other people. Instead, choose goals that you’re deeply invested in. 2. PLAN FOR THE LONG HAUL. Many people think of New Year’s resolutions as a quick fix for the previous year’s problems and bad habits. In reality, though, it takes time to create lasting changes in your life. Make your resolutions with the knowledge that you’ll need to work on them consistently, and adopt the mindset that if you fall off the wagon, you’ll climb right back on. 3. TAKE BABY STEPS. Every big achievement is made up of a series of small action steps. Break your goals down ahead of time, so you won’t get overwhelmed when the new year rolls around. When you transform a big resolution into a lot of small, doable steps, you’ll always know what to do next. 4. TRACK AND CELEBRATE YOUR PROGRESS. One of the best ways to stay on track is to look back at how far you’ve come. It might be hard to see how your small victories matter from moment to moment, but over time, those little wins really add up. Keep a log of all your progress, and reward yourself for COPYRIGHTED 76 | JANUARY 2024 | WWW.ATLANTICAVEMAGAZINE.COM meeting milestones on the way to your main goal. The Takeaway New Year’s resolutions get a bad rap because most people give up on them after a few weeks. But if you love setting goals for yourself at the start of the year, don’t give up on the idea of resolutions just yet. Resolutions can actually be a very useful tool. By taking the right approach and avoiding these five common mistakes, you might find it easier than you expected to keep your resolutions all year long.
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