We’re two weeks into 2023 already! For many people, by mid to late January, life’s normal routines start to take over and the good intentions that helped produce that laundry list of New Year’s resolutions begin to fade. It’s easy to lose focus on your resolutions when the daily needs of work, school, and family responsibilities prioritize your time. When it’s only a couple of weeks into the new year and you’ve already failed to stick to your new habits, it’s easy to lose motivation and even let feelings of failure creep into our minds.
Some of the most common New Year’s resolutions include getting in shape, eating healthier, saving more money, starting a new hobby, quitting smoking, reading more, and being more organized (St. Luke’s Health, 2021). While these are great aspirations, the way you frame your goals - whether it’s a New Year’s resolution, a work or research-related goal, or a personal goal - can have a sizable impact on your ability to achieve them. It’s also important to remember to be compassionate towards yourself during the process of achieving your goals. The trick is to find a balance between creating achievable goals, holding yourself accountable, and not beating yourself up when you stumble along the way.
What’s Motivating Your Resolutions?
The first step towards achieving any goal is ensuring that the goal is realistic and achievable. Consider your motivations behind wanting to achieve a specific goal. Let’s take two of the most common New Year’s resolutions as examples: 1) getting in shape/exercising more and 2) eating healthier. Both of these goals should help improve your health. If either of these is among your goals for 2023, take a moment to think about why you want to do these things.
Do you want to improve your health and wellness? Do you want to not be out of breath so quickly when you go for a walk or take the stairs? Has a doctor recommended lifestyle changes related to nutrition and exercise to help better control a condition like hypertension or diabetes? Or does your motivation stem from a more negative place, such as societal pressure to be a certain body type? Do you feel shame or embarrassment about not fitting into a specific definition of beauty?
Examining why you actually want to achieve a certain goal may actually help you realize that you don’t want to achieve that goal after all. Pursuing a New Year’s resolution that’s motivated by fear, shame, or the desire to impress others is not likely to be a resolution you will stick with (St. Luke’s Health, 2021). Instead, choose resolutions that will enrich your life, bring you joy, and that you are doing for yourself, not for anyone else. Pursuing a goal that’s grounded in positive self-motivation will help you keep working towards your desired outcome.
Creating Achievable Goals
Creating SMART goals can be extremely beneficial when it comes to helping you create achievable resolutions. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound/trackable. Many people fail at achieving or maintaining their New Year’s resolutions because they are far too broad.
Make sure your resolutions are specific to your goal. A resolution such as “get in shape” or “exercise more” is very general. What does “get in shape” mean to you? Do you want to be able to jog or run a 5K in six months' time? What’s your current exercise routine like? Do you have one? If you don’t, exercising more might mean exercising for 20 minutes two or three times a week. If you’re already exercising three days a week, consider increasing that to five days a week.
Be Flexible
While creating specific goals is great, remember to be flexible when needed. If you find that exercising for 20 minutes three times a week isn’t working with your schedule, don’t give up. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing mindset. If you can make 15 minutes, twice a week work with your schedule, go for it! An all-or-something mindset is just fine, so be flexible and show yourself some grace when things get busy.
Be Approach-Oriented
A 2020 study that examined New Year’s resolutions and people’s ability to stick to them, investigated whether different resolutions had different success rates and if it was possible to increase the likelihood of a resolution’s success by providing information and exercises on effective goal-setting. One set of participants was asked to “formulate goals in terms of approaching rather than avoiding something” (Oscarsson et al., 2020). For example, rather than setting a goal to “eat less processed foods” (avoidance-oriented), participants could set a goal to “eat 5 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per day” (approach-oriented). 58.9% of participants who set approach-oriented resolutions considered themselves to have been successful in their New Year’s resolutions, compared to only 47.1% of participants who had set avoidance-oriented resolutions (Oscarsson et al., 2020). Reframing your goals into language that is inclusive (“eat 3 pieces of fruit every day”), rather than restrictive (“don’t eat/eat less processed foods”) helps you feel like you aren’t restricting yourself, and should help reduce feelings of missing out on the things you previously enjoyed.
Make Self-Care a Priority
Every day won’t be a success in pursuit of your goals, and that’s okay. Remember that failure is often just a first attempt at learning, and that you can use the lessons learned from failure to do better next time. Recognize and acknowledge that there will be times when you will struggle and even fail along the way, and remember to show yourself some grace and kindness during these times. Make self-care a priority in your journey toward achieving your resolutions. Self-care resources and tools that can help you on the path towards achieving your goals can be found on Himmelfarb’s Healthy Living @ Himmelfarb Guide.
We wish you all the best in your journey to achieve your 2023 goals!
References:
Oscarsson, M., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., & Rozental, A. (2020). A large-scale experiment on New Year's resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PloS one, 15(12), e0234097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234097
St. Luke’s Health. (January 7, 2021) Reframing New Year’s resolution with self-compassion. St. Luke's Health. https://www.stlukeshealth.org/resources/how-reframe-your-new-years-resolution-self-compassion
