By middle of January, you usually know how serious you are about your New Year’s resolutions. One in four quit by the end of the first week of January, and 43% quit before the beginning of February. Only 9% of people see their resolutions through successfully. If you have set a goal this year and already fallen off track, it doesn’t mean you should give up. It means you should fix your failed resolutions.
If you have already tried and failed, you at least know one way it’s not going to work. Maybe your goal was too ambitious, or you lost motivation (usually due to lack of an early win), or you slipped up and ate the thing you weren’t supposed to, or you tried to make too many changes at once.
We’ll review the best ways to fix your failed resolutions. Because it only becomes a failure if you give up completely.
Define the vision for your life
This first one is not as intimidating as it seems. If you have failed in your goal, your new habit probably doesn’t feel like it’s a part of who you are. That’s ok.
Take a step back. Think about the person you want to be in the long run. Write it down.
For instance, if you are overweight and want to get back to enjoying a physical activity you once loved, you could write down “I want to be a fit, active person who can run a mile without keeling over,” or “I want to be able to run around with my kids and throw them in the pool.” This long-term identity based vision for yourself will help you figure out why you want to make this change in the first place.
Re-defining your identity is one of the strongest ways to stick to your goals. Because working towards your new goal is now a part of who you are, not just something you said you want to do.
And don’t worry about having to become the vision you set today. You can always adjust your vision later – the important thing is picturing something better for yourself to give you a target.
If health and fitness is your goal, check out this article outlining why it matters.
Focus on 1-2 areas of improvement
The flood of inspiration that comes with New Year’s resolutions can create a motivation to fix everything wrong with your life all at once. You write down 10 different goals, set up plans to tackle all of them, then as you try to do everything at once, you realize it’s impossible.
Trying to make too many changes at once almost guarantees that all of them will fail. Instead, prioritize the 1-2 things that are most important to your vision, and focus on those.
For instance, if you see yourself as a healthy, financially secure person, it will be hard to focus on making forward strides in your career (working more, starting a side business, continuing education, changing jobs, etc…) and doing everything necessary to drastically improve your health (diet change, working out more, adjusting sleep, etc…). Instead, pick 1-2 goals and stick with those, while maintaining the rest.
Habits are much easier to maintain once you develop them. Work on 1-2 habits at once, make those a part of your routine and identity, and move on to the next priority while maintaining the newly developed habits.
For this person, it could be a priority to focus on improving health, then working on the career goals. He could start with specifically focusing on diet and creating a consistent workout routine. Then once those are in a good place and the results are satisfactory for these two areas, he could move the focus on the career goals while maintaining the health habits that have been developed.
Set concrete, realistic goals
Setting concrete goals gives you a way to measure progress. Instead of saying “I want to get stronger,” a better goal would be “I want to do 10 pullups in a row.” It helps if you add a deadline too, like “I want to do 10 pullups in a row by March.” If you cannot measure your goal, it is not a good goal.
Keeping a goal realistic is very important, as success gives you the reinforcement needed to continue a behavior. Even if you set your vision as a super fit, athletic person, if you can’t do one pushup it would not be helpful to set a goal of 50 pushups in a row by next month. You want your goal to be challenging but attainable.
Instead, be honest with yourself and set one goal for your next milestone. It could be as simple as one perfect pushup by the end of the month.
Even if you miss these goals, it’s not a huge deal as long as you continue to make progress. You can always re-adjust your goals as you go.
Focus on easy habit changes
Aim for consistency over results. Your habits will determine your success more than anything else. When in doubt, ask yourself, is this something [insert new identity/vision] would do?” For instance, if you are aiming to be healthier, you could ask yourself “is eating cookies/ice cream/fried chicken something a healthy person would do?”
You probably have a good idea of the habits your new identity would maintain. Again, keep any changes realistic, and focus on developing the habit itself.
For the person trying to lose weight, that could mean just getting to the gym three times per week. He doesn’t even have to work out, the goal can just be showing up three times per week. The bare minimum habit of going to the gym is what we’re training. Any workout on top of that is a bonus (and if you just show up, chances are you’ll get in that workout). The habit doesn’t have to be any more ambitious than that to start.
For someone trying to further his sales career, for instance, it could be as simple as reading at least one page of a sales book every night.
Changing habits is very difficult. That’s why it’s important to make the smallest steps you can to train the initial habit and build from there.
Here are some resources to help create these habits:
Change your environment
Will power alone will not carry your habit changes. If you always have cookies and chips in your house, you will find it difficult to not sneak one every now and then. And this will sabotage your vision of becoming a fit and lean person.
You have the power to change your environment. Get rid of the junk food from your cabinets. Buy the business books or sign up for the real estate or sales class. Buy the domain name for your business idea. Set your gym clothes out before you go to bed. Join a gym close to your home. Sign up for that boxing class. Set up the pullup bar in your door. Look up healthy meals you like to eat and buy only those ingredients.
These simple environmental changes will help fix your failed resolutions, if you really want it.
Man up
At the end of the day, we can’t perfectly set goals or always stick to a perfect vision of who we want to be.
Sometimes you’d rather die than go on that run. Or you’re so tired from the day you don’t want to study new sales techniques or industry trends. Or all you want is a box of Oreos and to binge watch something mindless on Netflix while scrolling your phone.
We’ve all been there, but you can fix your failed resolutions.
Think of your vision, and ask yourself if it’s really want you want. Sometimes you have to man up, use willpower, and move one step closer to this vision. It defines a grown man vs. a helpless boy.