5 Tips for Sticking to Your New Years Resolution

It’s that time of year again. New Year’s Day is just around the corner and we’re thinking about how we want to improve the future. Year after year, most people set out with new resolutions only to fall back into old habits or lose motivation after a few months.

We did some research and found 5 Great Tips to Make Your New Years Resolution Stick from Forbes.com.

Choose one not many.  Rome was not built in a day. A study by the Journal of Consumer Research found that writing out a detailed plan worked well for participants when they focused on a single goal.  When they focused on multiple competing goals, the detailed plan was less effective. 

Put your goal in writing.  Whether you go old school and post your goal on a piece of paper and tape it to your bathroom mirror or you go high tech, write down your goal and post it where you will review it and re-engage on a regular basis.

Set action commitments. Breaking your goal down into smaller steps and holding yourself accountable to each of the steps takes a long term goal and brings it into the short term.  Setting a list goal like the 52 new things, made it easy to measure. If you want to spend less and save more, you could set a weekly savings goal and write down how you reduced your spending each week.

Take it a step further than simply telling a friend.  Enroll a friend in a goal setting partnership where you support each other on a weekly basis to meet your goals.  Set up a weekly call or send a weekly email to your partner with your progress.  Even if your progress report is simply, “I didn’t do anything this week,” putting your goal in focus each week and having to report on your progress can help you stay on track.

Reward yourself. Give yourself some kind of acknowledgment when the action steps are accomplished and a big reward when the final goal is reached.  Rewarding the steps along the way can motivate you to keep going, especially when the steps are challenging and the goal is a tough one.

Forget New Year’s Resolutions this year.  Want to make an impact on your life?  Pick a life changing goal and announce it to the world.  Pair up with a partner or a group of people that are like minded.  You never know,  2015 could be the best year of your life.  Why not go for it?  What do you have to lose?