How to Make a Better New Year’s Resolution

First of all, I don’t usually make any New Year’s resolutions, because on 1st of Jan I’m not usually in the best frame of mind to be making life-changing commitments. The holidays are busy, over-loaded with commitments and tasks and errands, parties and family gatherings. I prefer to have a bit of quiet in order to consider the next change I’d like to make in my life.

But if New Year’s resolutions are your cup of tea, here are 5 things that will help you be a success with them.

1. Make it specific. You might have determined, ‘I’m going to improve my relationship with my partner.’  If you state it like that, how will you know when you’ve achieved it? Instead, why not tell yourself how you’re going to do that? ‘I’m going to set up a date night with hunny once a week,’ or, ‘Whenever I notice how nice he looks, I’ll tell him.’
2. State it in the positive. Our subconscious seems not to notice the language subtleties of negatives. Instead of, ‘I won’t forget my anniversary this year’ (where the sub-conscious hears only that you will forget it), how about ‘I remember my anniversary in plenty of time to get a nice gift for my hunny.’
3. Forget try. In life, whenever you say, ‘Well, I’ll try,’ you might just as well say ‘I have no intention of doing that, or even thinking of it ever again’, because that’s what you really mean, isn’t it? You either do, or don’t do. There is no ‘try’. No resolution worth its salt will look like, ‘I’ll try to <fill in impossible dream>’
4. Give it a deadline. A vague fantasy with no deadline and no action will go on and on and on. If you really want to make this change, commit to it! ‘I will clear the boxes from my loft by the 25th of March!’
5. Get some leverage on yourself. This works no matter what it is that you want to change. If you’ve said for years that you want to quit smoking, well, go on and figure out some way that it will be so important to you that you dare not smoke again! (Of course, stating it positively, it’s not that you won’t smoke anymore, but that you are a non-smoker!) Ask yourself:

• What would happen in your life if you did make this change?
• What would happen if you didn’t make this change?
• What wouldn’t happen if you did make this change?
• What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t make this change?

Bottom line, instead of this: ‘I’ll try to get more fit’, tell yourself, ‘I’ll work with a trainer to make a plan to lose 2 stone by 25 of June, and improve my time for a mile to 6 minutes by the end of August.’ Ho! When you say it like that, I believe you.