Setting, Keeping New Year's Resolutions: Five Tips

Setting, Keeping New Year's Resolutions: Five Tips - Near the end of each year, a wooly, ugly monster comes shuffling out of its cave to stalk people all over the world. This monster arrives within the last few week of December for most people, and the species, known officially as newyearus resolutionus, is a fearsome brute who can bring even the strongest man to tears. His power isn't in what he can do, but in what we can't do to stop him from showing up, year after year. Year after year, he gets just a little bit bigger.

You know how the tradition goes. A few days before New Year's Eve, someone invariably asks, "What are your resolutions for next year?" Most of us are raised to "shoot big, or don't shoot at all." So we aim high with our goals. We announce that we will lose twenty pounds, publish the next great novel, and quit smoking and drinking, at the same time! But, even before the official New Year holiday rolls around, you know you won't fulfill most of these goals. You don't really want to do any of these things, but you were put on the spot. Someone said, "Make up goals, now!" You panicked, and there was flop-sweating involved.

And then, perhaps seven days into January, you've already dropped at least two of your resolutions. By the end of the month, you've dropped most, and by spring, you're already dreading the review process. In October or November, you start looking in the mirror, and you think, I promised myself that I was going to lose twenty pounds, and I gained ten. I promised to quit smoking, and I'm smoking more. I said I'd publish a novel, and I can't even remember to e-mail my mother. (I admit, I may be projecting on you on that last part.)

These failures combined with the change in seasons can make seasonal depression even worse. You're already feeling awful due to the shorter days. Your mind is searching for reasons to be sad, and nothing satisfies misery like a blown resolution from last year. However, there are some practical ways to avoid this cycle of failure and depression. While these five methods are not exhaustive of all the possible techniques that you can use to combat the holiday blues, they can be a great place to start.

1. Don't jump just because someone said, "Go!"

Someone has just put you on the spot and asked what you plan to do this year for your resolutions. What do you do? Defuse the situation by declining to answer. Say, "I'm still thinking about it," or, "It doesn't really matter to me." Then turn it around, and ask what they plan to do. Half the time, they won't really have an answer either. They were just wanting to put you on the spot, to see how you would decide.

While this might not seem like a big deal, it causes you to put undue stress on yourself to "lead the way." So when you lead big, but can't deliver, no one else will spend as much time as you do being bothered by these failures. The best way to defeat this problem is by not getting involved in the process of trotting out your goals for public inspection.

2. Be realistic with the goals you make

One piece of advice applies in so many situations, and yet it is a maxim that people ignore when it comes to making resolutions. Unless you make a decision to do something right, you won't do it at all. Yes, many of you are saying, "duh" now, but if you don't really want to write the next great novel, then you'll never even sit down to type up an outline, much less start typing the first page of your story. If you don't really want to quit smoking, you won't. So it won't matter what excuses you make up for why you should quit, because you aren't ready to come off of your habit yet.

If you tell everyone that you will quit, and then you don't, you have the added burden of other people's expectations being broken. If you brag that you will write a great novel, and you never even sketch out an outline, most everyone expects that already. But you will still end up asking yourself, "Why didn't I get this done?" This leads to further self-recrimination for other perceived shortcomings, adding fuel for a "bigger, better" list of resolutions next year.

Instead of going this route, choose goals that you are ready to accomplish, and that you can accomplish with realistic effort. Instead of declaring that you will lose all thirty pounds, why not aim to trim off the 10 that you gained over the last year? Instead of quitting smoking, why not make a resolution to reduce your habit to say, three cigarettes a day? Instead of aiming for a great novel, why not just see if you can crank out a few short stories, or maybe even some poetry? There's no rule about making resolutions that says they have to be all-or-nothing propositions.

3. Make some of your goals easy to accomplish

This should seem obvious, but make some of your resolutions more like "sub-goals" of your primary targets. For instance, set up a sub-goal like "In the spring, I will start walking once around the block every night after dinner." Stop there. Don't promise to run the Boston Marathon, unless you already run marathons as a hobby. Instead of aiming for the full novel, try aiming for half a page of writing per day. Once you pass these easy goals many days in a row, you'll begin to set higher limits anyway. In this way, you've already assured yourself a victory, because some of your resolutions were accomplished this year. This tip leads directly to the next:

4. Don't turn January into a make-or-break month

There are eleven other months to schedule some of your sub-goals, and if you haven't reached your main goals in four weeks, then why not go ahead and extend your deadline by another 36-42 weeks? If you still can't make it, file an extension with yourself to make it a goal for next year. Or, why not go "whole hog" by moving to the next step?

5. Accept that you will break some of your resolutions anyway

New Year's resolutions are like a self-imposed report card on your life, but they don't have any real authority. No matter which religion you may have, breaking a New Year's resolution doesn't count against you at the pearly gates. Odds are good that Saint Peter won't say, "Your charitable donations were fantastic, and you attended service weekly. But, I see here that you failed your New Year's audits from 1978 to your dying day. Looks like you're going to roast for this, piggy. Start squealing."

Breaking a resolution shouldn't have to feel like getting an F in English, and no one but you will make you feel rotten for breaking your own resolutions. So don't go there, and don't beat yourself up in the first place.

There's nothing wrong in setting realistic resolutions, but perhaps you can help "ease" yourself into a goal by making slight changes before the first of the year rolls around.

Maybe you can start cutting back on your smoking so the nicotine fits won't be quite so severe.

Maybe you can decide to eat less during Christmas, requiring less of a dietary sacrifice to be made in the first place. (I know, it's blasphemy, but someone has to suggest it)

Maybe you can spend some time writing a goofy short story about your last vacation flopping, instead of trying to write a great spy thriller.

And maybe, if you come up at the end of the year just a hair shy on any of your resolutions, you can accept that it isn't your fault. It's happened to million of other people worldwide on the same day, and you aren't alone.

Besides, there's always next year to try again.