New Years resolutions are as old as time. A new year is a fresh start and an excuse to adopt the ‘new year, new me’ concept. Whether it’s about quitting smoking, going to the gym or starting a new diet, the most common scenario is to drop your new resolution.
Stress takes you over sometimes and probably last year’s resolution doesn’t even matter to you anymore but what matters is that you couldn’t commit to fulfilling your goal. We get it. Either you feel identified with not accomplishing your new year resolutions or because you know a lot of people who constantly set unrealistic goals when the new year approaches to drop them on the following week.
A study conducted by the University of Scranton, in the United States has shown that only 8% of people succeed in their endeavors. It is not that encouraging to see that most resolutions don’t end up being habits even for a week. Some people even stopped coming up with new goals because the probability of achieving them is far from reality.
The reason why they last so little is more obvious than you think. Here are five reasons why New Year Resolutions fail:
1. Wrong purposes
Did you pick your resolutions for the right reasons? Saying that you want to become a better person or improve your health is not something specific. You need more than your wish to change your life. Defining your goal as an action will help you know where to start from. Start from setting a goal with a purpose. A specific one. For example, if you want to eat healthier, book your first appointment with a dietitian.
2. Unfulfilling purposes
Are your New Years Resolutions your idea or somebody else’s? If everyone tells you to quit that job, move into a new apartment or stop buying plants then probably is not something you personally chose to do so most probably, the ideal will sink in. The goals you set should be something you willingly want to change for yourself. They should be interesting, exciting, and if you wish, challenging.
You need to understand why a habit needs to change to make sure you won’t get lost along the way. Assess your resolutions and pick the ones you really want to achieve. Less is more, right? Succeeding acquires truly believing in something and finding the motivation to accomplish it.
3. Unstimulating purposes
Did you see this coming? The third reason why most of our purposes fail is them being too easy. It might seem contradictory but let me explain. We have always been told to pick realistic goals, but we shouldn’t go all the way and pick something easily achievable.
According to experts goals must be outside of our comfort zone in order to make us feel fulfilled.
There are three areas:
- The first one is the comfort zone, where realistic goals exist. Setting goals that are very close to our current situation, is a way of deceiving ourselves. There might be an improvement but if we do not feel obliged to make an extra effort to achieve them, or if they don’t motivate us, we’ll probably end up dropping these goals.
- The second one is the zone outside of our comfort. You’ll know if you’re there because of the sudden fear, doubt and uncertainty you might experience. It is usually something you haven’t done before. This is where you should try to set your goals.
- The third one is the illusory area. Here’s where we set up unreachable goals that there are too hard to achieve. Goals existing in this area will probably end up demotivating and abandoning us.
4. Too many goals
Don’t overwhelm yourself. Setting too many goals or goals that are way beyond ambitious won’t get you where you want to be. Define an order of priority and set goals that all they need is efficient work to become a habit. Focusing on a few goals at a time can make us much more effective in achieving them.
5. Highlight your purposes
Constantly keeping in mind what your goals are will help you keep track of your overall performance while giving you the chance to review them periodically. This will allow you to evaluate if everything is on the right track or if some adjustment is necessary.
Now you are ready to set the right goals and fulfill them!
Good luck!
With information from this source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/365237
