How to Keep Up with Your New Year's Resolutions All Year Long

Do you have a hard time sticking with your New Year's resolutions? Or do you dislike making goals so much that you don’t bother even making them?

For the longest time, I didn’t like goals either.

I tried setting SMART health goals once in a while, but often ended up getting caught up with the busyness of life, not feeling motivated to actually stick with the goals, and eventually would give up on them.

As I learned more about how to make new habits, and through trial and error, I have since seen how goals are helpful tools in making change, and how to increase my success with achieving them.

I learned that what I was doing wrong was that I was just setting a goal and expecting myself to follow through. I discovered that having a plan is an essential component to actually achieving my goals. The plan keeps you accountable, it reminds you what you're aiming for, and helps motivate you to stick with it.

Now that I focus more on the plan for following through with the goals, I have been able to keep up with my goals much longer and enjoy making SMART goals. Unlike before, I now enjoy making goals because I believe that I can accomplish them, and am excited about continually growing and improving my life.

Tip 1 for success- Keep yourself accountable and remind yourself of your goal:

Tracking progress with goals is a great way to keep yourself accountable and to remind yourself to take the desired action.

I’m not talking about tracking so much that you feel like your wasting time, tediously documenting everything. I'm talking about tracking the number of times you accomplish the target, for example: tracking the number of meals you had at least 2 servings of vegetables in the week, tracking how much time you spend watching TV or going through social media per day, or tracking the days that you did some form of exercise.

Tracking the days that you do something that aligns with your goals is a good way to celebrate your wins. It also helps you reflect back on how many days you didn’t do the desired action, so that you can remind yourself that it’s still something you need to work on.

I started up a system for myself where I tracked whether or not I achieved my goal, and tallied it up for the week, and at the end of each month. A regular monthly calendar also works well for this. If you'd like a digit copy of the Google Sheets tracking document that I created, click here for a free copy.

Tip 2 for success- Motivate yourself:

The truth is, motivation isn't just something you get once and it stays forever. Often, motivation can dissipate as people get busy and other priorities become more pressing.

Since that feeling of motivation isn't there everyday, you need strategies to motivate yourself. Some of these strategies include:

• Choose a realistic goal and celebrate your wins.

  
  

  The goal you choose actually affects how much motivation you will have for it. If your goal is so hard that you hardly ever meet the weekly target, you can easily become discouraged and unmotivated.

  
  

  That’s why you have to choose a goal that is easy enough to actually accomplish. Being able to achieve your goal is motivating. And making progress towards your goal is also motivating.

  
  

  People tend to make goals that are unrealistic, such as exercising for an hour for 6 days every week. For many people, this can be unrealistic, considering the time constraints of life. This goal might be realistic for someone who is already exercising 5 days per week, but it is not usually realistic for someone who is going from 1 day per week all the way up to 6 days per week. 

  
  

  

  
  

  A goal should be realistic enough that you can still accomplish it on a busy day.

  
  

  After choosing a realistic goal, you can celebrate your wins of achieving (or even just getting close to achieving) the goal each week, which will motivate you to keep going with your goal.

• Reflect on the reasons for the goal, often.

  
  

  Regularly reflect on what it would be like if you kept up with your goal. Recognizing that each day that you meet your target is taking a step in the direction towards your desired outcome is a good way to stay motivated.

  
  

  Tracking the progress of your goals, as mentioned above, also serves as a reminder of the importance of the goal to you.

  
  

  

• Remind yourself that the goal isn't about perfection.

  
  

  Often, the reason for our goal is not to be perfect at it, but to make the desired goal a habit. That is why it is helpful to cut yourself some slack if you don't achieve the goal perfectly every week. The "all or nothing" way of thinking often leads people to feel discouraged when they aren't following their goals perfectly.

  
  

  If you don’t have any leeway to have a day or week where you don't meet your target, then you will be more likely to give up your goal after you have an unexpectedly busy or difficult week where you weren't able to meet your target.

  
  

  If you really want to accomplish your goal, you likely need a perspective where following your goal most of the time is your goal, and not all the time. Recognizing that you only need to accomplish your goal most of the time is a lot more motivating than a rigid goal. Rigid goals, especially the unattainable ones, often become disliked and then avoided.

  
  

  Instead of focusing too much on the times you miss the target, you can focus on getting back on track as quickly as you can.

• Increase your chances of success.

  
  

  As mentioned above, the success from a week of achieving your goal is motivating. In addition to choosing a realistic goal, you can also increase your chances of success by setting aside the time for it.

  
  

  For example, in order to have more time for reading, or exercising, or cooking (or whichever goal you choose), you will have to reduce the amount of time you spend on something else you currently do in your day. For many people, they are chewing up time by spending it on TV, Youtube, or social media, and this can be an area that they have room to adjust.

  
  

  The only thing that got me to start reading more was to tell myself that I had to stop using my TV, computer, and phone at 9pm at night, which would give me an hour to read or study. The step to accomplishing my goal included a pre-step, which was to adjust my schedule to allow for those things.

  
  

  I doubt I would have been motivated to read or study if I had the distraction of the entertainment from my phone or TV at the same time.

  
  

In summary,

Goals help us make a desired action into a habit. The more you do the desired action, the more likely it will become a habit. Your small, specific goals will have become an important part of your routine, where you do it automatically, without having to mentally think about it. 

Goals are good ways to remind ourselves about what our priorities are when life gets busy and can help us keep it at the top of our list of things to do. In the end, goals are just a useful tool to get you to do the things that are good for you, that give you a sense of accomplishment, and that improve the way you feel.

Setting goals at the beginning of the year is a great way to give you direction and a target for the year, so that each year you are improving and becoming a better version of yourself.

If you would like any support in creating healthy habits this year, you can set up a one-on-one nutrition counselling session with a dietitian.

What are SMART goals and how do you make a specific health goal?

SMART goals stands for:

Specific:

• It helps to be specific on what you are aiming towards, such as "2 vegetables at both lunch and dinner, at least 5 times per week" rather than "eat healthier." It could also be "some form of exercise 3 times per week" rather than "exercise more."

  It doesn't necessarily have to be super specific when starting off, because saying "60 minutes of exercise 3 times per week" can be a lot harder to achieve for someone just starting to exercise, or for someone with a very busy schedule, than it is for someone who already does multiple hours of exercise per week.

  
  

Measurable:

• If you've made your goal specific, you should be able to keep track of your progress with a simple check mark each day that you accomplish it, whether that's in your monthly calendar or a tracking sheet.

  
  

Attainable:

• As mentioned above, your goal should be created based on your current abilities. It should be a small step, rather than a huge jump, from where you are now. You can always make a harder goal after you achieve the first one.

  
  

Realistic:

• Similar to being attainable based on your abilities, your goal should also be realistic based on your daily life. You should factor in your current lifestyle, including how much time you have in the day, and what other demands you have going on.

  
  

Time Frame:

• End dates can be helpful for some goals, but when it comes to health goals, we often want to keep it up in the long-run. Therefore, it doesn't necessarily need an end date. It can still be helpful to have check-in dates to reflect on your progress though. Check-ins could be at the end of every week and every month, which helps keep the goal fresh in your mind. Finally, at the end of the year, you can look back at your overall progress and celebrate how much you've done.

Disclaimer:

The content on this website is not meant to replace direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.