How to make (and keep) your New Year's resolutions

Happy New Year! It’s the first day of 2021, and milestone dates like this force us all to take a look at our lives and assess what we’ve been doing, what we are doing – and most importantly, what we want to be doing.

It’s also the time when many of us convince ourselves that this year will be the year. The year that we finally tick all of those things off our to-do lists; must-visit destinations, life goals, career objectives, health goals or just trying to do more of some things and less of others.

However, if you’re a serial resolution-maker, there’s no reason why 2021 can’t really be the year that you get stuff done. The key is in making the right resolutions – achievable, realistic resolutions – and then learning how to make them happen. Read on for our top tips to help you live your very best life in 2021 and beyond. Because that’s precisely what we deserve after 2020…

Pick the right resolutions

If you don’t really care about your end goal, if it’s going to take a total life transformation to achieve or if it’s altogether too ambitious to realise, then you’re already on course to fail.

One third of resolutions have already fallen by the wayside by the end of January, and usually it’s because they’re just not realistic or achievable. If it’s too vague, if you don’t really care, or if you don’t know how to achieve it, then you won’t – it’s that simple.

Make sure your goal is specific – maybe it’s the amount of money you want to save each month, or maybe it’s the number of books you want to read this year. Whatever it is, lock it in and make it an exact figure to work towards. This way, you can also keep track of your progress, which in turn incentivises you to keep going.

Make a plan

The reality is, that even with the best of intentions, we don’t magically wake up a different person on January 1st, with more energy, time and commitment to making these long-held life goals happen. But what you can do, to try and make yourself become that person, is plan for it.

Give yourself a realistic timespan to achieve your goal in, and work out how you’re going to do it. It’s unsustainable to change your habits and routine overnight, but you can plan to change them gradually. Small goals that deliver small victories = incentive to continue and succeed.

Tackle the problems

With any change in your life, there are always going to be speed bumps getting in the way, and temptations to throw you off-course. But don’t throw in the towel – it’s how you tackle them that’s key.

Try and break down your goals into smaller, more achievable tasks, which make them easier to tick off. Make sure that your goals are flexible, and don’t hold yourself to them too stringently, as you’ll be more likely to just forget the whole thing. Don’t beat yourself up if you do slip up, and try to have a backup plan for if things do go wrong or you can’t fulfill your original target.

Don’t do it alone

Especially at this time of year, we all know someone else who’s trying to make a change in their life too. Buddy up with them and support each other, albeit virtually – even if your goal isn’t the same.

Tell them your plan and ask them to encourage you to stick to it, to hold you accountable to it, so it’s a public commitment. It’s just another incentive to help you get to your goal.

If you want to start running, plan to do it at the same time as one another and hold each other to account to make sure you run regularly. Then, when restrictions allow, run together. If you want to read more books, make a public GoodReads account and challenge yourself to stick to it in a public forum, or join an online book club if you know that you won’t make it to a ‘live’ one each week. If your goals are more career-based, make a plan to go over your progress regularly with each other, to encourage you to keep pushing.

And if you don’t succeed…

Don’t look at it as failure. You don’t need to tie a resolution into being on January 1st – if you slip up and you feel bad, you can start afresh at any point. Be kind to yourself, try to understand why you’ve missed your goal, and then make a tweak to your plans to try and avoid slipping up next time.