Have Your New Year’s Resolutions Bit The Dust? Here’s Why…

A New Year’s resolution is a promise a person makes for improving the coming year and is usually goal orientated.

A resolution can come in many different guises with plenty of people likely to have set themselves a new year’s resolution at some point in their lives. Whether they want to give up smoking, eat more fruit, lose weight, get fit…. the list is endless!

What do the Romans have to do with New Year’s Resolutions?

The new year’s resolution originates from as far back as 153 BC with the mythical God of early Rome called Janus (after January).

Janus had two faces: one looking backwards and one looking forwards, allowing him to look back on the past and look forward to the future. So on December 31st, the Romans imagined Janus looking back at the old year and then forward to the new year, and it became a symbolic time.

Romans would make resolutions for the new year and forgive their enemies for the trouble of the last.

It was also believed that Janus could forgive the Romans for any wrongdoings in the previous year, so they would give gifts and make promises, believing Janus would therefore bless them for the year ahead.

Thus the new year’s resolution was born!

In theory, a new year’s resolution is a great way of giving us the motivation to take action on something we wish to change. For some it works effortlessly using will power alone to achieve any set goals, but for the majority relying on will power alone is never enough.

This is why 80% of new year’s resolutions result in failure by February, yes, a whopping 80%.

There are many reasons why.  The resolutions we set ourselves are often unrealistic, too broad, too difficult and a world away from our usual daily routine. Then we rely on will power alone to try and achieve them! We already set ourselves up for failure before we’ve even began, then beat ourselves up feeling guilty when we don’t succeed!

This is why it’s imperative to break the resolutions down so they are smaller and more targeted.  Then you can introduce small, consistent, action steps that are realistic, achievable and fit in with our day in order to work towards achieving your resolution.

We eventually want our action steps to become habitual over time (our lifestyles are generally our habits) so it’s also helpful to add the action steps onto existing daily habits to associate the two.  It’s much easier to use an existing habit to build on than creating an entirely new one from scratch.

How to Write a Helpful Goal

It’s important to show an example of a resolution, so let’s use:  ‘I want to get fit in 2022’. Break this down and make it more targeted.  ‘I am going to walk 10 minutes a day 3 times a week in January’, which becomes much more manageable and should not overwhelm you. If you stop work for lunch each day (which is a habit), add the walk onto the end of this habit, which means you go for a walk after eating your lunch.

Make a start and as you get into it, the walks may become longer than 10 minutes and you may even find yourself walking more than 3 days a week.  The way this makes you feel then gives you extra motivation to build on, think of all the benefits this walk is having on you both physically and mentally.

The following month you can expand and perhaps add in a 20 minute walk 3 times a week with a longer walk at the weekend and so on.

So if you are in the majority who are already struggling to sustain that new year’s resolution for 2022, you are not alone!

Aim to break your resolution down into something that is smaller and more achievable. Once you have this, create the first small, achievable, realistic action step and find a daily habit to attach it to.

Build from there, be consistent in your approach and you can absolutely achieve what you want to!

Better still, grab yourself a partner in crime, share this resolution and use each other for motivation and accountability. It’s amazing how much having someone else involved can push you to stick to something. Use this partner to be answerable to in addition to sharing and boasting about the good work you are doing!

Featured image by Anthony Tran on Unsplash.

Author:
Antonia Ward

Antonia is a Mindset & Behaviour Change Coach and she’s on a mission to empower you to live a more fulfilling, balanced and healthy life. She specialises in life balance, stress, weight management and eating for health with online or in person coaching consultations. Owner of healthy habits. Follow her on Instagram & Facebook.