According to U.S. News & World Report, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be about 80 percent, and most completely give up on their New Year’s resolution by mid-February. Every year many people set out to make New Year’s resolutions in order to make improvements to their life for the upcoming year. For the first few weeks of the New Year, you’re doing well and are hitting every goal that you set out to accomplish. As February reigns closer you being to loose your stamina and desire for keeping up your New Year’s resolution that you set out to accomplish. Clearly, the 80 percent of people who fail at their New Year’s resolution means that you’re not alone. Tackling your New Year’s resolution shouldn’t feel like a mundane task or punishment. It should be an exciting habit forming journey that’ll assist you in becoming an improved version of yourself. For 2020, you shouldn’t want to become part of the 80 percent of people who fail at their new goals, but instead be apart of the 20 percent of those who are tackling their New Year’s resolution with passion!
Listed are the top 4 New Year’s Resolution Mistakes & How To Overcome them
1. You’ve Bitten Off Way More Than You Can Chew
Many people have such a desperate need to change for the New Year that they create massive and sometimes hard to obtain goals for themselves without considering the reality. The goal that they are trying to achieve becomes more and more like trying to overcome a daunting task that they procrastinate at doing. If you’ve made this New Year’s resolution mistake, then you are not alone. To prevent this, it’s better to turn your ultimate goal into small bite-size pieces, no pun intended. If your goal is to become vegan, try not to go at it cold turkey if you’ve been a heavy consumer of meat and diary products. An example of breaking down your goal would be to start off by increasing your fruit and veggie intake while eating lean meats such as turkey, chicken, and seafood. The next month would be to consume only seafood while continuously increasing the amount of fruit and veggies. Each month after you would slowly wean yourself off of all meat and diary products until you’re completely vegan. The point is to make your ultimate goal attainable by breaking it up into smaller and easy to achieve steps.
2. Not specific & Too General New Years Resolution
Another common New Year’s resolution mistake that many people make is that they set extremely vague resolution goals, which in result, becomes burdensome and easy to break. Too often we hear people say that they want to loose weight for their New Year’s resolution. However, simply stating to loose weight isn’t a specific goal. Instead, you should state something similar to… “I want to loose 30 pounds in 6 months by June”. This is a very specific goal that makes it effortless to attain. It states the goal amount that you want to loose and when you need to loose it by. Naturally, it holds yourself accountable and allows you to gradually loose the weight you desire while not making yourself feel overwhelmed.
3. Not Surrounding Yourself With Like-minded Individuals
This is a frequently overlooked New Years resolution mistake that could literally make or break the ease of accomplishing your goal. If one of your goals is to meditate or to practice yoga a few times of week, there are plenty of local organizations that you could seek out from Facebook groups, Eventbrite, or on Meetup.com. All are great resources that’ll expose you to a base of like-minded individuals. The power in surrounding yourself with people of the same interests as you is that it allows you to have accountability partners. It naturally creates friendships with those of common interest.
4. Failure To Analyze The Progress of Your New Year’s Resolution Goals
Too often we, including myself, look at success like a steady straight line of progress. Your progress will look like an escalating journey until you’ve reached your first major setback. This is usually the stage when we feel defeated and start to give up on the New Year’s resolution goal that we first began to achieve. When analyzed over a long period of time, let’s say 6-months to a year, progress looks something similar to an ascending line with gradual peaks, dips, and plateaus. In order to overcome the fear of not progressing, track and document the actions that you are taking towards your goals. This is similar to one’s food or weight loss diary.
