A new year, a new me. We all know it. When you visit friends or family to celebrate the New Year, you are often asked about your New Year's resolutions. It seems like we all have one. Unfortunately, these resolutions don't often last and you give up on them during the first few months of the new year.
So why is it that New Year's resolutions are so hard to keep or they often fail? How can you ensure that your New Year's resolution is more likely to succeed? This article explains some of the basics of New Year's resolutions and then also provides tips and tricks for keeping them in place.
Why New Year's resolutions often don't last.
People often set New Year's resolutions that are very different from their habits. This makes several of these resolutions fall outside the "comfort zone" or are not even really feasible or compatible with your current lifestyle, which of course makes keeping the New Year's resolution all the more difficult. For example: you would like to run 5 kilometers 3 times a week in the new year, but you forget to take into account that you are often still working in the evenings or that you hardly ever exercised before. As a result, this goal-oriented New Year's resolution may be harder to maintain.
Besides the feasibility of the New Year's resolution, the routine of the resolution and implementing the resolution as a habit is also very important. This is because people are creatures of habit and thus are much more likely to set behavior that is considered a habit. To implement behavior as a habit you need to repeat the behavior at a rather high frequency over a longer period of time. If you go running very occasionally or don't keep it up for more than two weeks, you are less likely to commit to running again after that.
How to sustain New Year's resolutions?
Both feasibility and implementing as a habit are important when it comes to keeping up a New Year's resolution. So think about what you can combine with your current life pattern and possibly build on this starting point. It might be more interesting to start by trying to run a smaller distance if you don't exercise much, rather than trying to run 5 kilometers right away. That way, you will also start running more easily because you will not look forward to it as much. In addition, try to repeat your New Year's resolution as much as possible, and then implement it as a habit.
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