Do you feel you are unable to stick to your new year’s resolutions or habits that will help you be more productive? And how does that make you feel about yourself? Not great, right? But instead of giving up on yourself, wouldn’t it be better if you tried to figure out a way to stick to your new year resolutions?
Fortunately, there are ways you can make your habits stick…
Your habits are a defining part of your life. Your habit thus shapes you, makes you or breaks you.
Come New Years eve and nearly everyone has a moment when they reflect on where they wanted to be and where they really are. This leads to some optimistic goals and resolutions that they intend to follow. But most of these are left halfway due to lack of motivation and determination. Thus, building the right habits and sticking to productive ways to achieve these New Year’s resolutions can go a long way.
If your resolution is based on a goal that needs to be achieved, break down your goal into small achievable steps. Form habits to help you achieve those goals. When we develop productive habits, we do not have to worry about leaving our resolutions halfway through. We develop behaviours that will help us achieve our dreams, resolutions and goals in auto-pilot.
Thus a good way to start would be choosing the habits we want to adopt, and you will then be amazed as these will help you achieve your goals one step at a time and help change your life.
Follow these hack to make New Year resolutions stick
1. Trust Yourself to build new habits
When we try and don’t succeed in sticking to a habit such as waking up on time, working out or even doing a set number of chores daily, we give up thinking we are just not capable. Believe in yourself and try again each time you fail. By strategising and implementing these strategies, we are all capable of building new habits. It only shows that if we are unable to build a new habit, we may be just strategising incorrectly and need to come up with new strategies to build productive habits.
2. Start Small
We usually tend to focus on the big picture and forget that it is impossible to reach our goals by first creating a blueprint and determining the small steps required to achieve a greater goal. When we set our bar too high right at the beginning, failure is guaranteed. For example, people think they should start exercising by jogging around 1 hour daily from the first day itself. A good practice would be starting with 10 minutes daily and building up your stamina and speed as you proceed.
3. Associate it to a trigger
Associate the habit you want to form with a habit that’s already been formed. For instance, if you want to build a habit of sleeping at a set time right after you read a book daily, start switching off your light at the set time regularly. After a point, your mind will associate switching off your light after reading at that time with sleeping and in no time, it will become a habit.
4. Gift yourself
Gifting yourself once you are successful in inculcating your habit for a certain period time will reinforce the habit and it will then be more likely to stick. Soon your brain will start to enjoy doing the habit itself, but first, you need to put incentives in place to motivate yourself to do it.
5. Don’t be harsh on yourself
Putting ourselves down and giving up because you could not achieve your set target is actually counterproductive. We should instead be kind with ourselves and allow ourselves minor setbacks. We can then focus on the next step and resolve to not skip the habit again.
5. Tell a friend about your goal
Tell a friend who you trust about the resolution or goal. They may help you focus more on the goal. They will also provide support and help you with ways to overcome challenges in developing habits to achieve these goals’ if you find yourself wavering. They can also help you ensure that you do not give up midway.
Having the right strategies in place will help you achieve almost any goal that you set for yourself. It all comes down to the grit, passion and perseverance with which you pursue your goals.
Do let us know if you are able to achieve your goals by forming productive habits today!