How to Set New Year’s Resolutions That You’ll Actually Keep
Did you know that out of the 40% of Americans who make New Year’s Resolutions only 8% achieve their goals? We’re going to break down the problems with Resolutions and give you easy, actionable steps to help you set New Year’s Resolutions that you’ll actually KEEP!
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How to Set New Year’s Resolutions That You’ll Actually Keep
Us Sisters were talking earlier about resolutions vs goals. Resolutions seem almost laughable when you think about how many people make them and how quickly they’re given up on.
Did you know that approximately 40% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions? Out of that 40% only 8% achieve said goal. Most are gone by February.
We decided to share our New Years Resolutions with you. It’s always nice to have some support with resolutions so why not be each others.
If we work together we can make it past the February mark. Keep reading after our resolutions to learn some fantastic tips to help your New Year’s Resolutions stick.
Katie’s New Year’s Resolutions
This year I have two things in mind – being better organized in my home and life in general. My house is very unorganized and I always forget things I’m supposed to do.
I totally bought an old school planner and am going to use it to write everything down. Hopefully this will help. Putting things in my phone doesn’t seem to do the trick.
Secondly, I plan to try and be more health conscious. I don’t plan on any specific diet or exercise routine but to just TRY to be more aware of what’s going into my body and how much or how little I move around.
I hate to use this as my resolution because I know it’s so cliche but my end goal is not to weigh a certain amount. It is to be comfortable in my own skin. Right now I don’t feel good about my body and I owe it to myself to try and be confident.
Kristy’s New Year’s Resolutions
Will this be my best year yet? That’s always the goal, right? To make each year better than the one before?
I turn 40 this year, so I feel like it should be something special, but what exactly should it be? I’m really not sure. I’m hoping we can figure that out together and really enjoy the ride while doing it.
As always, I want to be a better mom and wife. I want to better understand my children and their needs, and help them as they both grow into adults (with all of the challenges that transition brings). I want to find a way to make the time my husband and I spend together more nurturing since we are so busy and don’t always have a lot of time together.
I want to keep trying to make our new house feel like our home (on a budget that’s way too small). I want to do projects that get my creative juices flowing and make me feel fulfilled.
I want to become even more organized. (I know I am already organized, but I always have new ways to get even more organized spinning around in my head).
I want to learn new things.
I want to get better at things, like being a better cook, and prepper.
I want this blog to be a fun place that you all can come to. I want you to feel like you are interacting with friends when you are here.
Kim’s New Year’s Resolutions
This year I have a couple goals in mind. I would like to get my house to be a bit more organized and kept clean so I can spend more time with my family. No more Saturdays spent cleaning all day. I want Saturdays as quality, family time.
I want to work out more. I find myself sitting at the computer much more working on the blog. I’m used to working jobs that keep me on the move and that’s not the case anymore. I don’t want to be tired after playing with my kid for more than 5 minutes.
I plan on drinking more water. Getting the full 8 glasses a day is going to be the goal.
I need to get back into meal planning and prepping so we can save money by eating at home more often. This will also help us eat healthier which is always a goal of mine.
Tips to Make New Year’s Resolutions Happen
These look like pretty normal resolutions right? That’s the problem. Now that we’ve revealed our New Year’s Resolutions we’re going to expose what we did wrong. We’re going to show you how to make smarter, more attainable goals so that you can rock this year.
1. Get Specific with Your Resolutions
First off, resolutions often times are too vague. If you look back over our New Year’s Resolutions some of our goals are quiet generalized.
When goals are too big or open-ended we don’t know how to implement change so our resolutions get thrown out the window. Break down your goals to smaller, more manageable ones.
Maybe you want to eat healthier this year. Break that down to be more specific. I will eat vegetables with every meal. I will drink water with every meal.
Get Specific Example –
Let’s say one of your resolutions is to spend more time with your family. Well, that can be done in so many ways that we tend to not do any of them. Get specific.
Saturday mornings will be spent playing a board game together as a family. The TV will be turned off by 6 every night so we can read together as a family. You get the point. Setting clear-cut resolutions means you know exactly how to execute them.
2. Put Goals in Order.
You can begin this year working on all your goals at once but fail them by years end. Or you can work on one or two at a time. Once you have your routine down, move on to the next goal.
By the end of the year you can happily say you crushed all of your goals! Remember bad habits are formed over years. We can’t wipe them all out at once.
Phillippa Lally is a health psychology researcher at University College London. In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Lally and her research team looked at habit formation in the real world.
They found that on average, it takes more than 2 months for a new behavior to become automatic — 66 days to be exact. The length of time for a new habit to develop can vary depending on the person, the behavior, and the situation. In Lally’s study, it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit.
In other words, some of our habits might take some time to break. Working on one goal at a time can help us focus on changing that behavior for the good and isn’t that what resolutions are really about?
To help with this we need to evaluate our resolutions and set them in order. Do any of your goals go hand in hand? Will any of them be easier to accomplish if you complete another one first?
Example Goal Setting –
Say you have 4 goals in mind:
- Keeping a clean kitchen
- Eat more at home
- Food storage supply for one week
- Eating healthier
- If you keep your kitchen clean it makes eating at home easier, right? So first, you might set up a kitchen cleaning routine and work on that. Once you are consistent with it (maybe 66 days later?) you might be ready to start meal prepping so you can eat at home more.
- Meal prep might be tricky if you are trying to plan healthy, new meals you’re not used to cooking. Instead, start meal prep with some family staples first (pasta, rice, etc). After you’ve successfully kept up with meal prep for a couple of weeks it won’t be as stressful to implement more healthy, new options for meals or side dishes.
- Meal prepping and food storage are on the same wavelength so you could work on those together. Each time you write a grocery list, based on your meal prep, you could add on a couple of things you need for food storage.
I don’t know about you but, when I try adding too many new things to work on at once I get overwhelmed and none of them get done. However, if one or two habits get worked on until a routine is set and then we move onto the next goal, and so on.
By the end of the year we will have mastered them all! There are 12 months in the year. Use them all!
3. Make a Plan for Your Goals
Once you have your goals broken down and in order you need to make a plan. Write down your goals and your timeline. You can do this by day, week, month or all of the above.
If you’re not much of a writing down type of person you can make a vision board. Do what works for you. Jot down your specific goals, how you’re going to accomplish them, and by what time.
Example Plan –
- I will workout 5 times a week for 30 minutes.
- I will work out Mon-Fri.
- My workouts will be at 10 am everyday.
- Cardio Mon, Wed, Fri by working out to my favorite Youtube routines.
- Tues I will work legs and arms and Thurs I’ll do abs.
- I will search for new workout routines on Sat so I don’t get bored with the ones I have.
- I will check off every day when I finish and I will also check in at the end of the week to see how I did.
- I will look over everything at the end of the month as well to see what I’ve accomplished.
4. Don’t Give Up on Your Goal, Reevaluate!
If you are still struggling with a goal don’t give up on it, reevaluate it. Maybe you thought working out in the morning would be perfect but things just keep coming up and you don’t seem to be getting a routine set.
That’s ok. Maybe nights will be work better for you. Give it a try.
Review what’s working and what isn’t and make a new plan. Maybe your goal was still too big and you need to break it down more. What ever you do, don’t give up. You’ve got this!
Now that we have the steps we need to succeed, us sisters have some rewriting to do on our New Year’s Resolutions.
How will you make THIS YEAR your best year yet? Let us know in the comments! How we can help?
