Happy New Year! Can you believe that it’s already 2019? I am absolutely stunned. I’m even more floored when I think that I’ve had my blog for a full 6 months now! I know, it’s so young! And if you’re anything like Miss-A-Personality me, you’ve probably been thinking about your New Year’s Resolutions for about a month now.
You may be shocked to hear, but I am one of those rare breed of people that can actually stick to their New Year’s Resolutions. I keep journals. For many years they were personal journals, and in the last three years I’ve switched over to Bullet Journaling just because it keeps me better organized. I’ve always kept lists of my resolutions in my journals. At the end of the year, I reflect on my progress and either consider it a success or a failure. I fail some of them, based on life changes. Actually, I have a funny story to relate.
About four years ago, I had a list of new year’s resolutions. One of them was, in fact, to “live a less consumer-based lifestyle”. To me, this meant trying to buy less clothes and, well, things in general. About six months into the year, we started training with a new set of coaches. After explaining to our coaches what our dance goals were, one of things they told us was that we needed to upgrade our appearance. That meant investing in some luxury items and changing out our wardrobe. So, I went back to my journal and crossed out that line. But out of all five of my new year’s resolutions, I had managed to keep to the other four! Therefore, I still considered my year, overall, a success.
Why are New Year’s Resolutions Important?
I truly believe in new year’s resolutions. I think they are so incredibly important for putting into perspective the past year, and helping to shape what you want out of the year ahead. While it’s true that many people break them, including myself, I think even breaking them is important. After all, if you took the time to make the resolution and still broke it, then it probably meant it just wasn’t that important to you. This is easily as important as the resolution itself! Why waste effort and emotional currency on something that isn’t important enough for you to follow through on? That, alone, gives great perspective on your life!
New year’s resolutions also give you this feeling of a fresh start. I love that feeling. In fact, I recreate it throughout the year. When I fall off the “resolutions bandwagon”, as inevitably happens, I use arbitrary moments to create brand new “fresh starts”. If I made a resolution to drink less alcohol and I had a bad weekend (’cause, you know, Vegas happens), I’ll use the next Monday as a new fresh start and climb right back on!
The last reason why I think new year’s resolutions are so important is because they really help establish lifelong habits! Of the minority percentage of people who do stick to their resolutions, the vast majority of those resolutions end up becoming lifelong habits. That’s such a great benefit! To be honest, that, alone, convinces me to at least make the attempt!
Proven Strategies to Stick to Your Resolutions
Ok, I hope I’ve convinced you that making new year’s resolutions are important. Now for some strategies to make them stick!
Don’t Make Too Many New Year’s Resolutions!
This is strategy number one! All of those articles about “Top 10 Resolutions” and “15 Resolutions to a Better You” and “The Top 30 Resolutions You’ll Actually Stick With!”….. Ignore those. If you have very few resolutions, you’ll be able to focus all of your attention to those and better your chances of sticking to them. I limit myself to five. That’s it. Five big changes I want to make in my life. And if I don’t get up to five, I stick with the number I have. In fact, for 2019, I only have three resolutions. I kept the number low because they are major changes. The general rule of thumb is the larger the change you want to make, the less resolutions you should have. Then, focus all your energy into changing those few things!
Make Your Resolutions by Yourself!
If you need another article or website or Pinterest page to tell you what your resolution is, then it’s probably not that important to you. And if it’s not important, you won’t stick to it. Before deciding on your new year’s resolutions, think long and hard about what you want to change in your life. New year’s resolutions are as personal as things get. Not even Simeon knows what my new year’s resolutions are… unless I choose to share them with him. Because sometimes I need a little support. Which brings me to my next point.
Reach Out for Support!
I’ve kept to some new year’s resolutions on my own. But sometimes, we need support and help. This can be especially powerful if we reach out for support from our loved ones. Simeon has always been incredibly supportive of all of my new year’s resolutions, and one of my resolutions for this year will need a lot of support from Simeon, his family, and many of our friends. That’s because – and I’m not afraid the share it! – I have resolved to become conversational in Bulgarian by the end of 2019. If I can actually achieve this goal, that will be a massive achievement for me! I am so excited to embark on this final leg of my journey into speaking Bulgarian. And I will need all the help from our Bulgarian speaking friends and family that I can get!
Don’t be nervous. I think you will be surprised how many people respect that you are trying to keep to your new year’s resolutions and will be more than happy to help you in your journey.
Think Ahead About Your Resolutions!
So even if today is already January 1st, and you’re hitting yourself right now for not starting your new year’s resolutions on day 1, don’t sweat it! You’re not going to fail your resolutions just because you start on the second week of the year, or even the second month! But you will fail if you make a random wish and call it a resolution. Instead of downing your glass of champagne at midnight and then deciding at 12:01 that you want to quit drinking, take a week to think if this is something you really want to commit to doing. I mentioned earlier that I start thinking about my new year’s resolutions at the beginning of December so that I am sure I know whether I want to commit to it or not. Give yourself time.
Make a Plan!
Nothing is worth doing if you don’t know how to do it! Come up with a plan before embarking on this journey. Of course, this means thinking about a few different things. First, plan out some actionable steps to help achieve success in your new year’s resolutions.
For example, with my resolution of becoming conversational in Bulgarian, I have three main action steps I intend to use. First, I want to only speak Bulgarian at breakfast with Simeon. It sounds small, but even that small step will be really difficult at the beginning! Second, I want to speak only Bulgarian with Simeon’s family when we eat dinner every week together. And third, I am going to pull out my Bulgarian language books and Bulgarian sitcoms and flashcards and commit to studying Bulgarian for 30 minutes every day. Again, 30 minutes sounds like very little, but it’s certainly a lot more than I’ve been doing recently. Of course, I also know that studying language is cumulative, so even only 30 minutes will grow as the year continues.
Get Rid of Triggers and Rearrange Your Life!
The next thing to plan for is to get rid of negative triggers. That means ridding yourself of anything that might tempt you to renege on your resolution. In my case, I live in America, so that’s going to be difficult. I just have to strengthen my will!
Rearrange things around you to reinforce building your new habits. I plan to keep my flashcards in my purse and will post stickers around the house with the Bulgarian words for things I don’t already know on various objects. I’ll also post a list of Bulgarian words on my mirror in the morning so I can review as I’m getting ready for work and bed every day.
Don’t Blame Yourself if You Slip Up
The road to building every new habit is fraught with roadblocks and bumps. You’re bound to fall off the “resolution bandwagon” at some point! Don’t blame yourself, that’s normal. And don’t get down. The truth is, all you need to do is pick yourself up, identify what caused you to fall off, and jump back on! It’s a journey, not a destination. Every one of us stumbles. I’ve stumbled many times on my new year’s resolutions journeys. It doesn’t make you a failure. It’s just a setback.
And if you get to the end of the year and you realized you completely forgot about the resolution or you haven’t done anything about it since March, don’t sweat it. The only thing that means is that it wasn’t that important to you. That’s ok. If it wasn’t important enough to remember it, then it’s not important enough to fret about it.
A Recap of How to Make New Year’s Resolutions Stick
As a quick summary, here are the steps to make your new years resolutions stick:
- Â Keep the number of your new year’s resolutions down to a reasonable size.
- Â Decide on your resolutions without help from other people or articles.
- Â Think about your resolutions ahead of time, don’t decide on them on a whim.
- Â Make a plan with clear action steps.
- Â Remove triggers and rearrange your life to enforce building good habits.
- Â Don’t blame yourself when you mess up. Just keep jumping back up and starting again.
I hope this helped! Personally I love this time of year, when the entire year is fresh and new. Honestly, I always feel so motivated and energized! I’m so excited to get going on my new year’s resolutions. For some of them, I didn’t even wait for the new year to begin! And if your new year’s resolutions have anything to do with ballroom dancing, we can help! In fact, one of your first action steps can be to sign up for our newsletter and join our community! We’d love to have you!
