Before you make your New Year’s resolution, take a minute to avoid these common resolution mistakes -- and make sure it’s one you can actually keep. Typically, New Year’s resolutions don’t work for 4 reasons.
1. They’re all about what you think you should do
Stop smoking? Start exercising? Eat healthily? These all sound good on the surface, but typically a resolution is based on what you think you should be doing, rather than what you really want to be doing. Forget about what you or other people think you ought to be doing and look at what you really want.
2. Resolutions are like goals
Some resolutions are like goals in that they’re about getting more of something. The trouble is that setting goals rarely works. The problem is that as soon as you set a goal for yourself, you’re saying to yourself that you want more in your life than you have right now. The very nature of goals make you look forward to what’s next, never at what you’ve got right now. Once you reach a goal, what’s next? Another goal. Then another, then another. When do you get to stop and just enjoy life right where you are?
3. There’s no motivation or commitment
Over a third of resolutions don’t make it past January and over three quarters are abandoned soon after. The reason? No commitment. The problem is that you’re taking something that doesn’t mean anything to you and trying to make it happen. Resolutions lack a foundation of meaning and personal relevance that makes sure they run out of steam.
4. The timing’s all wrong
Not only are you coming off the back of the holidays and getting back to the harsh realities of the world, but you see the whole of the year stretching ahead of you and summer’s a whole 6 months away. Why wait for one particular day to make a decision, when there are 364 other equally great decision-making days available to you?