New Years Resolutions, doing it right;

New Year’s resolutions are a cruel joke. Societally, we all choose one time every year to play into one another’s desire to be better, without ever sharing strategies for achieving those goals. We don’t share healthy recipes and portion control tools, we just seek to lose weight. Further, we’re encouraged to set these goals on a regular annual schedule despite the fact that we don’t really want to make a change. If we wanted to make a change, we’d already have made it! Then we all fall off the bandwagon all together over the next few weeks and commiserate over our troubles. The socially accepted New Year’s resolution just doesn’t work. 80% of us will fail with our new year’s resolutions by February, so you need a better a plan.

There’s a lot working against you when you set out to change. Again, consider a common goal of losing weight. Whatever your weight, it’s the result of your activity level and eating habits which you’ve learned over your whole life. You’ve programmed your brain, through repetitive activities, with a set of behaviors and knowledge which leads to your current weight. In order to lose weight, you’re focusing on the end result without considering the totality of lifestyle habits which lead you to want to change.

You’ll need to spend time considering each habit and decision, how it’s impacting your goal, and how it needs to change, and that’s going to take time. Because of this time, you’ll need to be patient, and people aren’t patient. We’re all chronically overestimating our ability to make changes in our life, and that overestimation sets up a failure. So what can you do? How can you have a successful new year’s resolution?

When choosing your goal, don’t keep it simple, make it big and specific. Choose a goal that’s a reach, one that you can get excited about. Losing five pounds is not a good goal for most people; you may lose five pounds over vacation just due to not sitting at your desk all week. Choose thirty pounds (if that’s a healthy goal)! Being excited about a goal will help your motivation at the outset and in the long run, and as you consider your goal over time, you’ll find an emotional attachment to the goal becomes an important motivator. Even better, make sure there’s a specific measurable outcome you’re seeking. Thirty pounds is a good start, but it could be better if it included a time frame. A big specific weight loss goal is “to lose thirty pounds in six months”.

Once you have a goal, start working towards it. When choosing what to do, ask yourself a question: What’s the single thing I can do right now which will be most effective in achieving my goal? Start with a list of all the things you can think of first, if you have to, and start crossing off those which you know won’t be that effective. Be disciplined and find the single thing which will help you most, and then do it. Do it as best you can, until it’s done. Until it’s done, everything else is a distraction. Pursue that single thing with laser like focus until it’s done or until you do it automatically, as a habit. Then ask yourself that question again. Don’t fall into the trap of doing many things; you’ll do them worse than you could, and there’s the one thing you could be doing well.

Once you know your one thing, and you’re working on it, write down your goal and read it to yourself often. I’d recommend twice daily to start. Read it when you’re struggling, and read it when your succeeding. Read it out loud, and internalize it. Repetition will help you to develop an emotional attachment to your goal, and that attachment will lead to better results. Good luck!