4 Ways to Succeed at Your New Years Resolutions

Have you struggled with trying to stick to a New Year’s resolution in the past? Do you always start out the new year with resolutions but find yourself always failing to follow through? The University of Scranton did research and found that only about 44% of the people who make a New Year’s resolution are still pursuing them by June of that year.

This is not something that should be too surprising because everyone knows that they have failed at their resolution from time or another. One of the biggest problems for most people with sticking to these resolutions is that they do not plan for them. Another is that they are vague and do not include specific goals that can be reached in a certain time period.

1. Use Achievable Goals
When you do not give yourself a small goal that is attainable you are likely to get bored and not follow through to reaching the final goal. So many people also use goals that can not be measured like to be healthier. Without an exact goal that is measurable how is one to determine if they are really healthier or not? To come up with goals that you can stick to think about things that can be achieved and are measurable. Instead of getting healthier maybe a better goal would be to drink 6-8 glasses of water each day and to be able to do 50 jumping jacks in a row. This would show that you are healthier and is something that could be measured. With weight loss, consider your yearly goal. Then determine the amount of pounds that you have to lose each month. Doing this will make it more achievable.

2. Follow Ups Are Key
After a few months or in some cases after a few weeks you could lose all of your commitment to your New Year’s resolution. Being consumed and focused on the everyday pressures like work, additional obligations, and family can make it hard for you to stay on track towards meeting your goals. So to help yourself stay on track, make a schedule of follow ups that you are going to be able to follow through with. These follow ups are a great time to track your progress towards you goals. Each month you should have a day where you dedicate some time to answer the following questions:

Where are you at on your long term goals?

What smaller goals have you achieved?

In the past month, what have you been doing to help you to meet these goals?

What are your plans for next month to help bring you closer to your goals?

3. Miss a Goal? Don’t Let that Stop You

When you are trying to follow through with a goal for an entire year it can be really hard. In fact it can b so hard that you could even decide that it is too much work and give up all together. Recognizing that most things in life that are wonderful are not that easy to achieve is going to help you to reach the goals that you are looking for. If you miss one of your smaller goals do not let that keep you from seeing the bigger picture. In fact instead you can focus on how you can work a little harder to meet the next goal on time. Working out and eating right can be especially challenging and sometimes they can be forgotten. Remember that each day is a new day and a new chance to jump right back on track.

4. Take the Time to Measure it All

One of the things that can really help you to track your progress is to check out one of the apps that will do it for you. Remember that by measuring everything you can look back over time and see the bigger picture. Sure, it might only be one pound this week but when you see it tracked and you see the bigger picture that it was 12 pounds in the last two months then you can really see the differnence. Here are some tips to help with your success:

Break larger goals down into smaller goals that are easy to measure.

Think about percentages and look at measurements as being complete or incomplete.

Keep track of everything, even the set backs and challenges. Look at the bigger picture during these times and try to figure out what was the cause of these.

Now you know what you need to do if you want to stay on track towards accomplishing your New Year’s resolutions. The great thing is that it is not too late to jump on the band wagon and make your own resolutions for 2015.