5 Tips to KEEP your New Year's Resolutions

Perhaps you’ve made some New Year’s Resolutions. But can you keep them? If you’re like many, you start the New year with a lot of grit and gumption, but a month or two later, your will power has waned.

So, what can you do to follow-through on your goals this year? Here’s five ways that may help you go from “weak” to “winner”....

Strategize ‘em. There’s the famous saying, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you want to win at your goal, set up a simple plan. For example, if you want to lose weight, sit down in the evening and make a list of all the food you're going to eat the next day. Then ONLY eat that food. Consider what you’ll do when you’re faced by temptation. Will you wait-out the temptation for 10 minutes? Will you have a “healthy snack” ready to eat in the fridge? Strategizing the night before helps create structure to your day and helps you stay on track, rather than giving in to every whim.

Keep ‘em Small. For many people, we want to see big changes fast. So, we make huge goals: work out for an hour right away. Go to bed two hours earlier than normal. But, taking on too much too quickly is a sure fire way to fail at your goals. Just as small hinges swing large doors, you’ll find that making small, incremental changes consistently can make a big difference! Not sure if you believe it? Try making one tiny change for a full week, such as stretching each morning or going to bed a half hour earlier each night, and see the difference it makes in your life.

Keep ‘em Sustainable. Research shows that “approach-oriented” goals (such as changing the way you eat or sleep) may be more effective than avoidance-oriented goals (such as restrictive diets). When making a resolution, it’s important that whatever you do is sustainable for the long-haul. Avoiding all sugar, never eating chips, going to bed at 10 am every single night may set you up for failure and cause you to give up quickly. So, if you detect all-or-nothing words such as “never, always, or every,” BEWARE: you’re probably making a promise you’re likely to break.

Stack ‘em. Want to fit in that workout? Try habit stacking, which is lumping your new habit with a habit you’re already doing. For example, if you already daily make supper, do the dishes and make lunches, simply stack “working out” onto those formerly-established habits and you're more likely to follow-through!

Support ‘em. We all know that accountability can help us follow-through on our goals. Just having a “work-out buddy” or a life coach can help us stay motivated and active. Don’t have a buddy? Join an online group or sign yourself up for a 30-day challenge to help give yourself that extra “oomph.”

New Year’s resolutions are a great way to illicit change in your life. And trying these tips make help you make your resolutions a reality this year. The important thing, however, is to have fun along the way, realize that change takes time, and that progress rather than perfection is the ultimate goal.