How To Successfully Keep Your New Year Resolutions, 2024

None of us is new to New Year resolutions. We make them every year but how well do we keep them?

Some of you reading this post have great New Year resolutions inspired by your honest reflection on the last year. You have a number of things you wish to improve or change in aspects of your lifestyle, career, education, and personal health and well-being.

We all have great plans and resolutions to make every new year a fresh start in our lives, but most of these New Year resolutions do not last long, such that they are often referred to as a mere to-do list for the first week of January.

To harness the benefits of your great New Year resolutions, I will show you some tips on how to successfully keep and achieve your new year goals. First, let’s see why we fail to keep to our New Year resolutions.

Why We Fail To Keep/Achieve New Year Resolutions

Here are some reasons why many of us are unable to achieve our New Year resolutions despite the enthusiasm we display at the beginning of the year.

1. Deciding only based on the joy of the moment

It is normal to experience so much joy and enthusiasm at the beginning of the year. However, to be able to achieve your New Year resolutions, you need to be able to sit down and think about your own reasons for making such resolutions instead of making them simply because of the joy of the moment.

2. Not documenting your resolutions

We sometimes forget our plans and targets. Writing them down ensures we remember them always or have something to fall back to when we forget.

3. Indiscipline

Indiscipline is the number #1 reason why most people are unable to keep their New Year resolutions. You must bear in mind that keeping your goals and targets for the year is not all going to be easy and pleasant but you must be determined to achieve your goals as planned.

4. Forgetting to think about them

As the year runs by, you need to continue to meditate and ruminate on your resolutions for the year. Failure to do so can result in you forgetting about them, particularly when other activities begin to flood your life.

5. Being too radical in starting afresh

Many people think every New Year resolution has to be brand new but that should not be the case. Every new year is a continuum from the older one. Hence, you should also consider some great plans you have kept running from the previous year(s) or older years instead of discarding everything to start afresh.

6. Ignoring or rationalizing past lessons

Some New Year resolutions are based on some negative experiences from the previous year. But because many people are too forgetful, they ignore or begin to explain away some important lessons that led to the formation of that resolution in the first place.

8 Ways To Keep To Your New Year Resolutions

Here are some ways to keep to your New Year’s resolutions without fail.

1. Set realistic goals. Take one step at a time.

Your new year goals have to be smart, realistic, and achievable. Ensure you make plans you can keep and not make resolutions only based on the euphoria of the moment.

To achieve your goals for the new year, be systematic, taking one step at a time. Whether you want to lose weight or achieve something, remember that it is not going to happen in one day. You are more likely to keep to achieve your New Year resolutions when you make them with this idea in mind.

2. Prioritize important goals and concentrate your efforts on them

If you have a long list of New Year’s resolutions, you will need to prioritize and concentrate your efforts on the most important goals. That way, you have your energy spread across the board to achieve your New Year resolutions.

3. Break down goals into smaller steps or tasks

When you leave your resolutions as big targets without any clear plan for achieving your goals, that can make them daunting and difficult to achieve. Instead, break them up into smaller steps and tasks that will cumulatively lead to their achievement.

A simple example is as follows: Include an actionable plan like “I will exercise for 30 minutes daily and at least three times a week” instead of leaving it as “I will get in shape next year”.

4. Track your progress and celebrate small wins

Regularly track your progress for each of your New Year resolutions. That can be another source of motivation when you find that you have made some progress in achieving your goals.

While there are many ways to track your progress for your resolutions, an easy way to do that is by using a New Year resolution template (shown below).

5. Stay positive at all times

Even when you fail to meet your daily, weekly, or monthly targets prescribed by your New Year resolution, you need to stay positive and move on. It is not a failure until you quit. Thus, no matter how disappointed you might be in yourself, resist the temptation to quit on your goals.

6. Learn from your setbacks

To achieve your New Year’s resolutions, it is paramount to not ignore the lessons from past failures with your resolutions for last year. Learn from these setbacks and make this new year better and more fulfilling.

7. Remember the gains

At the end of the day, you will not only feel fulfilled and satisfied in yourself, but your New Year resolutions can make you better, more productive, healthier, and richer. Think about these and stay focused on your goals.

Final words

New Year resolutions are meant to be kept, not broken after the first week of January. It will give you great joy and more satisfaction when you achieve your goals for the new year. The above tips will help you keep to your New Year resolutions and avoid turning them to a point of mockery or jesting.

Happy New Year!