New Years Resolutions – adding realism to the illusion
 
With the best of intentions, countless people undertake the challenge of abiding to self set goals known as New Year’s resolutions. The resolutions themselves vary greatly.

They range from your typical abstinence resolutions like avoiding alcohol and chocolates to more personalised ones like “I’m going to make more of an effort to spend more quality time with my children this year”.

Although resolutions can vary greatly from person to person, one fact remains common between them all, the fact that they are hastily broken and forgotten. Following is a set of guidelines composed with the intention of helping us keep our resolutions realistic and achievable.

The main point to consider when taking on a resolution is to keep it simple. Nothing is gained by making overly complicated or stressful ones. We should be mindful that we are undertaking the resolution to better ourselves or the quality of our lives. With this in mind, we should be aware of the terms we set for ourselves in our resolution construction process!

We should not use words like “never” when we set out our goals. Using a word as definite as “never” sets us up for failure before we even begin. Take the resolution “I’m never eating chocolate again” as an example. Most of us would be much more likely to resume eating chocolate if we had a slip. The word “never” implies we have failed by eating the chocolate, and when we fail a resolution, we tend to forget about it. So, instead of using “never” we should make a resolution like “I will try my best to keep my chocolate eating to a minimum”.  This safeguards us against total failure, because now if we have a slip, we can pull up our socks and soldier on with our promise to ourselves, safe in the knowledge that we haven’t failed outright.

Another good way of upholding our resolutions is to involve a friend. If the two of you make the same resolution, you can act as motivation to the other person. This works a treat if your resolution is to exercise more or to dedicate yourself to the gym. The fact that you have involved a friend makes it much less likely that you will give yourself the permission to quit when it gets too much. Having a friend involved is a great way of keeping the moral up not only because you can motivate each other, but also because the two of you can enjoy the benefits and compare your progress with each other. You are much less likely to give up on your goal if you do it as part of a team. So keep in mind, resolutions don’t have to be painful or complicated. As long as you take the correct approach from the onset, you could be setting yourself up for some major successes.