Top Five Tips on How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

Since the new year is around the corner, seems like everyone is coming up with some of their new year's resolutions. Old habits tend to be hard to break. So here are top five tips on how to keep your new year's resolution.

Set specific goals
You need to set very specific goals in order to be able to achieve them. In corporate goal setting terms, your goal needs to be specific, measurable, achieveable, reachable and time sensitive. For example, "eating healthier" is not a specific goal. "Eating two servings of vegetables each day for the rest of the year" is a specific goal.

Incorporate the specific goals into your daily schedule as soon as possible
The hardest part of keeping your resolution is making time for your resolution. So, you need to actively schedule your resolution into your schedule. So if you want to exercise 30 minutes a day, set aside a specific time and location to achieve this goal and incorporate it into your schedule.

Share your resolution with supportive family and friends
If you keep your goals to yourself, you are more likely to break them. Therefore, share your resolution with supportive family and friends. The key is to make sure these are supportive individuals. Some of your close family members and friends may not be supportive because they have not been successful in meeting similar goals. Do not be discouraged by them. Instead, you need to find new friends or supportive individuals such as colleagues to make sure you stay on track.

Set intermediate milestones
Set aside some milestones to reward yourself of meeting your goals so you can re-evaluate whether your goals were achievable. If they were too ambitious, then you can scale them back. If you have already reached your goals, then, it's time to set new ones.

Celebrate your wins and try, try again
Set a celebratory reward for reaching your resolution or goal and make sure you celebrate the momentous occasion. By setting aside time to acknowledge to yourself that you have achieved your goal, you are more likely to stick with your resolution. Also, if you don't reach your goal, don't give up, try, try, again. Unfortunately, most individuals have given up on their new year's resolution before the end of January. According to the American Psychological Association, new habits take at least 60 days to be incorporated into your daily life. So the key is to stick with your resolution. It will get easier once it's part of your daily routine.