How to Make New Year's Resolutions You Can Keep

Many people make resolutions as part of their New Years Day celebration. Unfortunately, most of us break those resolutions in a matter of days. If you want to stand out from the crowd and make your resolutions stick, here are some tips to help you out.

Step 1

Keep your New Year resolutions simple and relevant to your life and circumstances. It doesn't matter if your resolutions appear unimportant or dull compared to the resolutions of your friends. Remember this is about improving your quality of life, not keeping up with someone else.

Step 2

Make a list of at least a dozen general resolutions. Look the list over carefully and choose no more than four to actually develop for implementation in the New Year. Limiting the number of resolutions you take on will prevent things from becoming overwhelming.

Step 3

Flesh out those four New Years resolution ideas, giving them structure and focus. All too often, people make nebulous resolutions such as "I will lose weight" or "I will stop smoking". Dig deeper and create yourself a game plan, such as "I will lose weight by walking thirty minutes a day, eating more fresh vegetables and cutting my intake of desserts to twice a week". This provides you with specific goals that help you keep the resolution but are still broad enough to allow you to incorporate other strategies as the year progresses.

Step 4

Make at least one New Years resolution that is super easy to keep. This will help you maintain your momentum by making it possible to look at your resolutions and see that you are doing well with at least one. And if you can do one of them well, why not all four?

Step 5

Be prepared to stumble and fall every now and then. If your New Years Resolution is to stop smoking, don't beat yourself up when you puff a cigarette two weeks into the New Year. Pick yourself up and start again. After all, you made it two whole weeks; tell yourself that next time you will make it three weeks before giving in to temptation.

Tips & Warnings

Post your list of resolutions where you can see it every day. Create your own desktop design for your computer and feature those four resolutions. Put a copy of the list on your refrigerator door. Keeping your resolutions handy for viewing at least once a day will increase your chances for success. The biggest reason people break New Year's resolutions is that they never intended to keep them in the first place. Don't waste time making resolutions that you either do not want to keep or that you think are beyond your ability to keep right now. If you remain realistic about what you want to accomplish and can reasonably be expected to accomplish, you will do a much better job.