How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

I don’t know about you, I have always been discouraged by the fact that I am making new year’s resolution every year and subsequently finding myself breaking them one by one. I can imagine many of you nodding your heads in agreeing with me. J

Well, there is really no easy answer to this problem. As human beings, we are filled with different commitments and unforeseen challenges coming along, we quickly switch to “fire fighting” mode and tiring ourselves in the process. At the end of it all, we may even feel "satisfied" because we manage to put off the fires somehow. The least thing that would cross our minds is the fact that we have spent so much time and effort in these urgent stuffs and therefore unconsciously put aside the “important” and “prioritized” things which we resolute to accomplish at the beginning of the year.

I am a profess Christian and disciple of Jesus Christ, I resolute to keep my appointments with God everyday. I must say this is definitely not easy especially when various demands come from all spheres of life, including family, work, church and friends. Yes, I confess that I skip my quiet time with the Lord too. Thank God that His grace is sufficient for me, His sustaining power strengthens me to pick that up and start again.

This experience of God’s empowerment and sustaining grace are not limited to my spiritual walk with Him. They are available for my daily practical life too. I budget my expenses every year, sub-divide them into manageable monthly figures. I find it easier to manage family finances when I resolute to put aside a sum every month for tithing and charity work. These are important priorities for me and my family. Of course, tell you frankly, I also slipped in certain months. However, due to my commitment to God and the resolutions, I usually manage to “make good” in the next few months.

Just spend a few moments to imagine how the course of your life could change for the better if you followed through on your resolutions until you achieved your goals!

Change Your Thinking

It's very possible to overcome your habit of giving up on New Year's resolutions with a few basic tips. Above all else, avoid regarding your resolutions as something to aspire to and then forgetting them when they no longer seem pertinent or interesting. New Year's resolutions can be extremely enriching and self-improving if you find a way to maintain them throughout the year.

What I am going to share with you here may not be very “spiritual”, but they do help me to sustain the new year resolutions.

Here are some tips for keeping your resolutions:

1.     Make a commitment. You must be willing to make a strong commitment to change in order for your resolutions to be successful. Believe that, by the grace of God, you can, and will, accomplish what you set out to do. If you give yourself unwavering support, then you'll bolster that belief and achieve what you seek.

·       Choose New Year's resolutions that you genuinely want to achieve. Make positive resolutions and focus on the positive aspects of achieving them.

·       Tell everyone you know about your resolutions. When everyone knows what you're setting out to achieve, they can help hold you accountable.

 

·       Plan ahead rather than choosing your resolutions at the very last moment. The longer you spend planning and preparing for your resolution goals, the better the results will be.

2.     Have realistic expectations. Continued motivation is the key to achieving your goals. If you set the bar too high, then you also set yourself up for failure, which can be profoundly de-motivating for you.  

·       Aim realistically, rather than too high. Give yourself a challenge, but not so much of a challenge that you end up setting yourself up for inevitable failure. 

·       If you plan on setting similar resolutions as last year, consider first and foremost why last year's resolutions failed. If your resolutions didn't work last time, then determine why in order to avoid a repeat performance.  

3.     Write down your goals. When you put your resolutions into writing, you make them real. You put your commitment down on paper. Put your goals where you can see them, in written form, so you won't forget what you're setting out to achieve this year.  

4.     Plan out your goals. Articulating what you intend to achieve this year is a big part of setting resolutions, but planning how to achieve them is a completely different story. Write down a plan for each resolution that you want to achieve rather than simply hoping for the best.  

5.     Give your goals flexibility. Not everything is going to work out exactly the way you planned, so be flexible in the goals that you set. Avoid allowing rigid resolutions to throw you off track if something doesn't go quite how you planned it. Try to predict what challenges you may face, and create a contingency plan for those challenges just in case.

Bottom Line 

You can keep your New Year's resolutions if you start with your commitment to the Lord Himself. And then you do a little bit of planning and preparing ahead of time. Just like any goal setting process, the key is to be realistic about your goals and the challenges you may face in trying to achieve them. The more realistic and flexible you are, the more likely you'll be to achieve your goals.