If you want this new year to be better than the last, here are some simple New Year’s resolutions ideas to help you achieve success in your personal and professional life.
Do you make resolutions every New Year’s, only to ditch them before January is over?
You go into the New Year filled with hope and determination that this year will be different. You make resolutions that you’re determined to keep throughout the whole year.
But as the days and weeks in January roll by, you realize that the New Year isn’t all that different. You still face normal life with all its challenges and distractions. Then you realize that the resolutions you made are long gone and it’s back to life as usual. Another year without any significant change.
The Cost of Failing Your New Year’s Resolutions
When you do this year after year, it starts becoming a habit – not just for New Year’s, but for goal setting in general.
Whether it’s New Year’s, your birthday, a new school year, a new quarter, or a new project, you go in with high hopes. With every transition, you see it as a time to make a change.
Every time you decide to change, but fail to do so, it creates a habit of failure. Eventually it becomes the norm and spills into every area of your life.
Your word has no value to others or to yourself. You say that things will change, passively hope that they do, and feel no weight when they don’t.
Your life begins to stagnate and you feel like you can’t move forward anymore.
Maybe you’ve already started feeling this way. I know I have.
After trying to make changes and failing at them, I find myself less motivated for change, and at the same time, more discouraged that anything will change.
But you don’t have to continue down that road.
This new year could be your best year ever. It could be the year finally you make the changes you’ve always tried.
Here’s how you can do it:
4 Simple New Year’s Resolutions Ideas
Most New Year’s resolutions fail for a few main reasons, and by avoiding them, you can create resolutions that you’ll succeed in.
First, most resolutions are grand and unrealistic. Next, they’re often vague and undefined. And finally, there’s usually no plan to achieve them – it’s just hope.
Follow any one of these simple New Year’s resolutions ideas and you’ll find yourself experiencing more success:
1. Set One-Time, Immediate Goals
The majority of New Year’s resolutions involve creating a new routine, habit, or lifestyle meant to last… forever.
This could mean exercising regularly or quitting an addiction. Changing a major lifestyle habit, whether it’s adding or removing something, is extremely difficult to do. This doesn’t mean that you don’t try.
In order to set a precedent for success, you need a win. You need to know what it feels like to set a goal and succeed. Try creating a one-time goal that you can cross off immediately. This could be running a mile, trying a new hobby just once, or doing one nice thing for someone.
It could lead to a more frequent activity, but get that first win quickly to start some momentum.
2. Set Short Term Goals
Many New Year’s resolutions either have a deadline at the end of the year, or they take an entire year to finish.
When something is that far in the future, it’s really easy for you to get burned out doing it, or to procrastinate or completely forget about it.
Set a short-term goal, preferably something that you can accomplish in the next month. It may be doing something for 4 weeks consistently, or breaking down a long-term goal into smaller steps, with the first one being due in a month.
3. Set Less Frequent Goals
With the start of the New Year, it’s easy to start out sprinting and then losing steam pretty quickly.
There’s a lot of excitement and motivation at the start, so you begin by doing as much as you can. You may commit to exercising everyday, eating all healthy meals, or maybe taking hobby lessons every week.
It lasts a few days or a few weeks, but eventually fizzles out into nothing. Learn to pace yourself and set something realistic. Think of an optimal frequency, then go a little less than that to account for things that may come up.
That could mean exercising twice a week, eating 4 healthy meals a week, or taking lessons once a month.
You may think it’s aiming low, but it’s not. Having realistic goals that you achieve is much more successful than setting grand goals that you fail at.
4. Set Progressive Goals
New Year’s resolutions also fail because you try to get to the end right away.
A New Year’s resolution involves you doing something or being something that you’re currently not. But there’s a path to get there. Just like you don’t lose 20 pounds in one day, you don’t go from no exercise to daily exercise immediately.
Whether it’s a routine you’re trying to establish or a specific thing you want to accomplish, get there progressively.
If you’re goal is to exercise daily, and you’ve never exercised in your life, start off with once a week for a month. Then set a new goal and go for twice a week for the next month. Gradually work your way up to your goal.
When you do this, you’ll actually experience progress and start building a mindset for success.
How to Achieve Success in the New Year
We’ve gone over some super simple New Year’s resolutions ideas that help you get started small and work up towards your goals.
The main point is to experience success. As you begin getting small wins, you build the confidence and strength to start going after bigger wins. You build off the momentum of small successes.
Just think what your life would be like this year if you started attacking your goals with these small and simple New Year’s resolutions ideas. Your first month would be filled with incredible success. The next month you set slightly bigger goals, and with the momentum you’ve already built, you achieve them as well.
A few months later, you’ll realize that your life is significantly different and better because you’ve had success all along the way.
All because you started with achieving small goals.