Happy 2020 everyone. It’s New Year’s resolutions time again.

According to statistics, about 60 percent of the world’s adult population make New Years’s resolutions each year.  That’s good, right? Well, not really, because the statistics also indicate that 80 percent of those who made resolutions abandoned them by February. Only a measly eight percent achieve the goals they set.

What about you? Did you make New Year’s resolutions in 2019? If so, were you among the eight percent that stuck with their resolutions?

Or maybe, like me, you had stopped making resolutions because you got tired of failing to achieve them.

Well, I’ve been doing some thinking and it occurred to me that there’s nothing wrong with making New Year’s resolutions. In fact it’s a good thing because the aim is usually to get better at something, get rid of some bad habits, start some good ones and generally make ourselves better. So I have decided to give New Year’s resolutions a try this year, using a different approach.

Why Do We Fail to Achieve Our New Year’s Resolutions?

Since New Year’s resolutions are good and when we make them we have every intention of sticking with them, why do we fail to achieve our goals? I believe the answer lies in why we made them and how we made them.

Why Do We Make New Year’s Resolutions?

Between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and perhaps a few days after, there is usually a lot of discussion about New Year’s resolutions. It’s on the TV, on the radio and it’s a popular topic among family and friends. We realize that many people are making resolutions. People are asking “What’s your New Year’s resolution(s)?” We don’t want to say we didn’t make any so we hastily come up with something.

Or could it be that someone close to us (a spouse, a parent, a sibling or a close friend) has been pushing us to do something and that person strongly suggests we do it during the ‘new’ year? So reluctantly we take on that activity as our New Year’s resolution.

Resolutions made for any of the above reasons will most likely not be achieved, because we are not really interested in achieving the goals. We’ve set the resolutions for the wrong reasons.

How Do We Make New Year’s Resolutions?

I believe most of us choose an activity, for example to learn a new language and we simply set out to achieve it.  We are really interested in this but we do not have a plan as to how we are going to approach learning the new language. The year keeps moving and we’re not getting anywhere so we get frustrated and overwhelmed and then before long, we quit.

A New Approach

To increase the chances of achieving our New Year’s resolutions we need to ensure that we’re making them for the right reasons and that we make a plan as to how we will achieve them.

Our New Year’s resolution must be something important to us. Something that we are motivated to achieve because doing so will mean some benefit will accrue to us. For example, we lose 20 pounds and look fantastic or we spend less and save so that we can buy a new TV.

Make a plan for achieving the goal. Break the goal into manageable segments and attach a time period to each segment. You can split the year in various way,s for example, one month periods, two, three or four month periods. You can even work with weeks if that suits you better. Just ensure that the time frame you attach to each segment is realistic, based on your ability and the time you have available.

Let’s Reward Ourselves

As we work towards our goals, let’s reward ourselves for each milestone that we achieve and arrange a major reward for when we achieve our goals. This will help to motivate us to keep going.

Remember this is all about you, do not be concerned if someone else is doing it in a shorter or longer time.

Don’t Abandon

Sometimes we have every intention of sticking to our plan to meet our resolutions and then life happens. We face a situation that knocks us off track. What do we do then? My advice; don’t abandon the plan. We can revise our plans, try to do a little more in each period. We may still be able to achieve our resolutions. Imagine how great it would feel to be among the eight percent who do.

Worst case scenario

Maybe even after revising our plans and giving it our best shot we still didn’t reach our goals by December 31. Well, it’s not the end of the world.  We should just keep going, maybe we’ll get there in January or February. As long as we know we did our best under the circumstances, there is nothing to be ashamed of.

We need to keep in mind why we decided to pursue the goals in the first place. We wanted to get better at something and in the process create an improved version of ourselves. Well as long as we stuck to our goals and achieved them we ought to be proud of ourselves. We will still reap the benefits of our hard work; they will not expire at midnight on December 31.

Best Wishes

I hope this approach will work for us in 2020 and beyond. Let me know what you think of it.