How are your New Year’s Resolutions Progressing?
Did you make New Year’s Resolutions? Are you progressing? Some unknown person named Jan. 17th as Ditch Your New Year’s Resolutions Day. I don’t think you need to ditch them yet. It takes 30 days to make a habit. If you didn’t get going on your resolutions, it’s okay to get moving forward now. And if you did get going but aren’t moving along, here’s some ideas to re-activate your goals.
Success begets more success.
First, most resolutions are way too big, and you will miss the mark if you just go after the big goal itself. You can usually find several smaller goals within that one big goal. Chunking resolutions/goals down into smaller ones let’s you see more progress. More importantly, you have this sense of accomplishment of the smaller goal, and that makes you want to continue. Success begets more success. For example, your goal to drop 25 pounds won’t happen in one week so you’re smaller goal might be 1–2 pounds a week instead. When you accomplish 1–2 pounds a week, you feel better than only looking at the bigger goal of not reaching losing 25 pounds. When you steadily lose 1 pound a week, that sense of achieving your goal is the motivation to keep going.
Reward yourself.
Second, add another motivator — Take small rewards as you accomplish each step. If you lost 1 pound, have a 1-pound reward. If you organized one drawer, have a reward for that, not just one reward when you organize all your files or your whole office or the whole bedroom — those are bigger goals and get bigger rewards.
Make a list of small rewards that you could take like a cup of hot chocolate or hot apple cider (vs. your usual coffee), or a sweet treat, or reading a novel for 30 minutes. (Don’t do this last one at work unless it’s lunch time.)
Chart it
Third, keep a chart of your progress as you accomplish each step. You could use a spreadsheet or even a handwritten list like:
Week 1 small goal = Lose 1 pound of weight and check it off when you have accomplished it. The same goes for week 2, 3, 4, etc. Reward yourself only when you accomplish the task and don’t reward yourself if you don’t complete the small goal.
