We all know the inevitable blow to your self-confidence when your New Year’s resolution inevitably fails. Still, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are 5 mistakes most people, including myself, make when it comes to making New Year resolutions stick. These tips can also be helpful in overall goal setting and are thus not limited to New Year.
1 Too broad and abstract
When it comes to setting goals the best thing you can do is to be concrete. Most New Year’s resolutions fail in their total ambiguity.
Let’s take the most common resolution, losing weight.
Losing weight can be a lot of things. It’s not clear at all what people mean when they express a desire for weightloss.
Do you simply want to shrink your belly? Or are you trying to get a six-pack?
You are going to need different approaches depending on your goals. Instead of saying I want to lose weight
Say I want to lose 20 pounds or whatever your goal might be instead.
You can now track your progress over the year and have a goal to work towards.
2 No plan of attack
You have decided to lose weight, but you have no idea how. This is understandable, the internet is full of shitty advice for exercise and nutrition with everybody claiming to be the arbiter of truth and correct information. What I typically see when January comes around are a lot of people going to the gym, doing some cardio on the machines for 20-30 min, lightweight training, and then going home. Is this really the best approach? If you go into the gym at the start of January and just do stuff without a plan you will 100% fail.
Instead, have a plan beforehand. This could include your training, but if you want to lose weight nutrition is more important. Start by cutting out sugar and proceeds food, learn to cook some basic healthy meals you still find tasty. Start walking around getting your steps in, maybe bike to work if possible. You do not have to go to the extreme, start with cutting out the bad stuff or limit it in your daily life.
3 Small and steady wins the race
You go to the gym with the idea of losing weight. You need to do at least 30 min of cardio and 60 min of weight training along with stretching and commuting to and from the gym. This is a huge time investment and you will fail. You might be able to keep this up for like a week, but after some time the overall time investment will keep you from the gym.
Make a plan with the essentials. Don’t work out that long if you are a beginner you will see gains from little exercise anyway. On days you do not feel up for it you just go to the gym and do the minimum work requirement. Once you are at the gym it becomes easier. The hard part of establishing an exercise routine is doing it constantly.
The same can be said if you want to read more. Start by reading 15 min a day and then work your way up to 20 min then 25 and so on. Consistency is king here and like with the gym example if you have days you don’t feel like it, just read one page or one line. The act of showing up is the most important thing. To paraphrase James Clear:
“A habit needs to be established before you can improve it”
4 Failure does NOT mean it’s over!
Just because you cheat on your diet or don’t work out for a week does not mean the whole resolution is over. It takes time to build habits and become the person you want to be. The New Year resolution is just the time in which you start working towards your goals. Again this does not mean if you fail from time to time that you should abandon your resolution. The idea of a resolution being perfect the first time is unrealistic, so don’t expect yourself to be superhuman.
5 no fun
This is lowkey the most important rule of them all. The people who join a gym in January to lose weight are often having a miserable time. Simply stepping up on the ellipsis or the treadmill for 30 min a day is not a good way to lose weight, it’s simply too boring. If you want to lose weight and exercise more try a bunch of stuff, from swimming to table tennis to hot yoga. If you can have fun while doing exercise the whole thing becomes 1000% easier.
The same can be said about reading more, you have to find the books you really like reading. The problem with reading should never be the struggle to pick up a book, but to put it down.
Don’t just cut out all the foods you like and eat vegetables and rice. Find healthy alternatives that are more filling and that you still like eating. That way dieting becomes more fun as you constantly expand your horizon for new food recipes. To succeed you must enjoy the process.
Conclusion
The truth about New Year’s resolutions and why most people fail them is the lack of time perspective. People also want these get-rich-quick schemes when it comes to exercise. People want to “beat” their New Year’s resolution at the start of February and then go back to living their old life with the lifestyle that made them overweight to begin with.
The problem is that people think weight loss is something you can do in a month when you should set up your weight loss journey as something that takes a lot of time. You should think in months or even years rather than weeks when it comes to weight loss.
BONUS TIP
When setting goals people tend to set them based on their best self, the person who wakes up in the morning and crushes the day, well that person is not the same person who wakes up tired and sore in the morning after some time.
When you put all these things together remember that some days are just shitty, you might be stressed at work, you might be sick or life has just gotten a little too hard. In that case, I would say do the minimum amount of work. Drink some water and go on a walk, there is your workout, do something small that will keep the chain going. The Youtuber Mat D’avella has a rule allowing him to skip one day of working out, but never two in a row. You can experiment with different kinds of routines. Everybody is different and everybody has different needs, so find out what you want to achieve, set a concrete goal with a plan, and try to have fun while doing it.
Happy New Year