3 Strategies to Keep your New Year Resolutions

Do you make new year’s resolutions each year but fail to carry them out?

For the last decade or so, I had been dreaming big, setting goals, and making resolutions. For years, I made new resolutions beginning each year, but soon the enthusiasm subsided, the motivation plunged, and I could not keep up with the resolutions. As the celebratory mood of the new year died, along with that faded my will to keep resolutions too.

Each year, the resolutions would get carried forward like a yearly ritual with a promise to myself that next time it's going to be different. But it never was.

My dream was to improve my fitness, read more books and improve public speaking skills. I tumbled, stumbled, fumbled but succeeded in the end.

If you feel you have been in my shoes before, failing to keep new year's resolutions or you are planning to make resolutions, you will save a lot of pain and frustration by following the advice.

Why I failed for so many years to follow up on my resolutions was due to lack of a strategy. To achieve my dreams, the strategy had three major strands: 

• Choose your own goals.
• Prioritise your goals 
• Form a habit

Strategy # 1 Choose your own goals 

“Some goals are not going to fulfill you. Choose goals that you value and care about.” Henry Cloud

Don’t choose others' goals.

If you get influenced by what others are doing and copy their goals, you will only be a copycat. Don't choose goals which are socially acceptable, or your close group of friends and family will approve.

You should not pursue or abandon your goals just because you are afraid to face up to the world, looking people straight in the eye, telling them that this is what you want to achieve. 

If you choose the goals set by others, you will never be passionate about it. You will soon get bored and give up because your heart is not into the thing you are doing. You will do things half-heartedly. When you do things half-heartedly, it is a no-brainer that you will not achieve your goals.

Strategy #2 Prioritise your list of goals

“organize and execute around your most important priorities.” Stephen Covey

Are your goals too many?

You are all fired up, charged and raring to go.  You want to do it all and you want to do it in no time. But you do not realise you are trying to do too much in too little time.

Remember you can do anything you want, but you cannot do everything. 

List your goals in order of priority. Choose one or two which you can do comfortably. Are you willing to forego something else in your life, while adding something new. Would sacrificing something else be worth it? For instance, if you stop exercising to read more books, it may not be worth the trade-off. 

Packing too many things in the schedule will soon stress you out. Introduce only one new thing at a time.

Strategy #3 Form a habit

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you are inspired or not. Octavia Butler

Whenever you are trying to do something new, you need to do it often, making a habit out of it.

Keeping a resolution is trying to do a particular thing every day. Unless it becomes a habit you cannot do it daily. Soon you will break the habit and off goes your new year resolution. 

To form a habit, start small and put a process in place. Prefer consistency over intensity.

There is no point in doing too much of a thing on one day or putting in herculean effort one day in a week and not doing anything for the remaining days. Working in fits and starts and in intense spurts does not lead to forming a habit. When something becomes a habit, you do it unconsciously and effortlessly without your will. This becomes a self-perpetuating virtuous cycle.

Once you master an activity, you can afford to work in intense sporadic sessions. 

You would have noticed that all the advice is strategic in nature, providing the right direction. 

The specifics of each situation would differ depending on the context.

If the direction is wrong, then no amount of hard work matters. It is like rowing a boat with double the effort but in the wrong direction. All the hard work takes you away from your goals rather than being near to reaching them.

Enthusiasm, will power and motivation are no substitute for a poor strategy.

When I failed to implement my resolutions and when I succeeded, on every occasion my intent was sincere and resolutions were the same. The difference was in execution. I could execute only because of the right strategy. 

Think strategically and execute the plan.