New Year's Resolutions: Making, Breaking and Faking Them!

New Year's Resolutions: Making, Breaking and Faking Them!

It's the favorite question asked at every New Year's Eve Party - what's your New Year's Resolution? Everyone makes them, everyone breaks them! But what can you to do try and beat the odds and fulfill your New Year's Resolution? Read on for some simple suggestions to make your New Year fun and productive!

First, Making Them: A lot of people tend to go overboard when making New Year's Resolutions; choosing to go to the extreme limit of what they want to accomplish. For example, you may say that you want to lose weight. But then you say that you not only want to lose weight, you want to lose twenty pounds by the start of February! Well, any health care professional will tell you that that's a New Year's Resolution that's guaranteed to fail. There is no safe way to lose that much weight and if you try you're likely to make yourself sick as well as failing to meet your goal.

Be realistic - set up a realistic goal that is attainable and possible. Aim for those twenty pounds to be off your body by the end of June instead of February and your New Year's Resolution is a lot more likely to be fulfilled and give you that sense of achievement! If your New Year's Resolution is to stop smoking either enter a properly supervised program or set reasonable goals for yourself that won't set yourself up for failure. Avoid the depression that happens when you break your New Year's Resolution by making them achievable and realistic in the first place!

Next, Breaking Them: Face it, no matter how well-intentioned you might be and full of determination it's more likely than not that you'll fall off the New Year's Resolution wagon. It may be a single cigarette when you promised yourself that you'd quit cold turkey; it may be an extra piece of fudge or helping clear out that plate of Christmas cookies but you're likely to slip away from your goal at some point.

Relax. You're just human. The odds are likely that no matter how realistic you are on setting a goal that you'll break your New Year's Resolution and slide a bit. But slipping a bit doesn't mean that you have to toss the entire project out the door. Get back in the mindset of achieving your New Year's Resolution and you can start again. Put in an extra hour on the treadmill to make up for that piece of fudge. Walk an extra mile for that stolen cigarette. There's no reason that you can't start your New Year's Resolution from the beginning or resume where you left off - there's no time limit other than what you place on yourself. And no one really needs to know.

Last, Faking Them: Feel free to lie about making a New Year's Resolution if you need to. There's no law that dictates that you must change your lifestyle at the start of each New Year and follow the crowd. Just nod your head and say something light, such as declaring that you've decided to give up making resolutions in the first place. Your friends and family may laugh but if the mental stress of making and keeping a New Year's Resolution throws a shadow over the festivities, then don't make any in the first place. After all, who remembers them a month later?

It's easy to get into the party game of announcing your New Year's Resolutions - but not so easy to keep them. Hopefully with these tips you'll be able to make them, break them and fake them with a smile on your face and a good attitude for the New Year!