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You Made the New Year’s Resolutions<br />
Are You Sticking to them?<br />
The festive season it seems has long<br />
come to an end. We‟ve eaten everything<br />
in sight and have the flabby insulation on<br />
our tummies to prove it. We smoke our<br />
last cigarettes of the year and wait for the<br />
clock to strike twelve. The fireworks<br />
light up the sky and it‟s time to get ready<br />
for the New Year! Clean slate! Goodbye<br />
old habits!<br />
But the novelty of the tabula rasa wears<br />
off quite fast, and most of us give up on<br />
that healthy eating and exercise regime<br />
we swore we‟d stick to religiously. We<br />
regret the money we spent on that gym<br />
membership that we won‟t use, and we<br />
beat ourselves up when we give in to that<br />
craving for a cigarette on the first of<br />
January. Research has shown that within<br />
two weeks of making their New Year<br />
resolutions people revert back to their old<br />
ways, or worse. This is largely down to<br />
the fact that we set targets that are either<br />
too high, or we were never enthusiastic<br />
enough to achieve in the first place.<br />
So how to make New Year resolutions<br />
you can stick to? Try not making them at<br />
all. Not that there‟s nothing wrong with<br />
setting goals and targets for yourself, but<br />
why wait until the end of the year?<br />
Instead of making your self-improvement<br />
an annual failure, why not make an effort<br />
Ten things to consider this New Year:<br />
1) Make a ‘personal improvement plan’ that you<br />
follow every day.<br />
2) Be kind to yourself.<br />
3) Promise yourself you’ll eat healthier more<br />
often but don’t deprive yourself from your<br />
favourite (and less healthy) foods either.<br />
4) Don’t call it a diet.<br />
5) Be honest with yourself and set goals for<br />
that are achievable and realistic.<br />
6) Find a physical activity that you enjoy<br />
instead of doing exercise that you’ll get bored<br />
of quickly.<br />
7) Do not beat yourself up if you slip back into<br />
your old ways, it’s a minor setback and nobody<br />
is perfect.<br />
8) Take things one day at a time, one goal at a<br />
time.<br />
9) Reward yourself for your achievements.<br />
10) Most importantly, do not wait until New<br />
Year’s Eve to make positive changes in your<br />
life, consider each day a fresh start and each<br />
year another chapter that you can begin<br />
without the extra pressure.
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