If you’re seeking a major change in your life, making a New Year’s resolution can be an important step in the process. The next step, though, is the challenging part. It’s keeping the New Year’s resolution. To keep New Year’s resolutions, one must be prepared to not only set goals but to set them into permanent motion.

Here are some potent suggestions to keep New Year’s resolutions that can change your life.

Begin with intention

To keep a New Year’s resolution, you must first be mindful of how and why you’re creating it. Bringing intention to your resolution is a sure way to make it stick.

For example, a resolution to eat better in 2020 will be common among many people as with past years. Creating intention surrounding eating better will be essential for making this lifestyle change. Simply doing it to look better, in my opinion, isn’t enough of a reason to continue the change long term. It’s definitely a reason, but there needs to be more. What if instead, we told ourselves something like: “I want to eat better so I can feel more energetic in all aspects of my life. This will allow me to effectively be there for myself and the people who need me.” The resolution would then be likely to manifest as a permanent change.

Overall, beginning with intention is placing your resolution in big bold letters rather than allowing it to be unnoticed in the background.

Plan how you will keep New Year’s resolutions 

A New Year’s resolution is not something to decide on when on the spot at a gathering or party. To effectively carry out a resolution, you’ll need planning, reflection, and preparation for an ultimate change in lifestyle. During this process, one of the best things you can do is imagine what might get in your way of carrying out the resolution, whether that be something physical or mental. 

Once you identify any blockages that could possibly hinder your new lifestyle goal, strike them down with solutions. Make note of them during your New Year’s resolution journaling.

If your resolution is actually to eat better, you may be imagining yourself having food cravings for the foods you’re trying to avoid. A solution is to keep healthy, wholesome versions of the foods you crave at home. If you expect you might crave cookies, for example, have some oats, almond butter, and dark chocolate on hand to make some healthy ones yourself. 

Another good tip for planning to keep a New Year’s resolution is telling everyone in your life what your goal is. This will hold you accountable and ensure a more thorough recognition and implementation of the resolution(s). 

To keep New Year’s resolutions, make them meaningful and important

Try to involve more than just yourself. Think bigger. Of course, the change you seek begins within, but how do you want to use it to help your community or the world at large? Try implementing these tips to make your resolution more meaningful and important.

Ask yourself what the world needs and become that

New Year’s resolutions often involve a desire to change ourselves in a healthy way. If the change we wish to see in ourselves indeed involves that, we can look at what the world needs in order to deeply engrain the resolution within ourselves.

Maybe a recent evening in rush-hour traffic made you realize how the world is succumbing to impatience, unmindfulness, and even desensitization. To counteract this, perhaps you can make your resolution revolve around practicing mindfulness. This could include practicing meditation, being fully present with someone during a conversation, or yes, taking some deep breaths and changing your perspective during rush-hour traffic.

Follow your intuition

Is there something you intuitively feel needs to change in your life? If so, is there a way you can tap into your intuition to figure it out? 

Sometimes there are aspects of our lives we don’t particularly enjoy. Meanwhile, we may have trouble identifying what’s producing these aspects. The best way to find out is by meditating on the issue(s). More often than not, we can trace the issues back to traits of our own. If the issue is stress-related, for example, we may initially blame the outside world. But when looking deeper we see how the problem comes from within. We see that regardless of external circumstances, we have the power over how we perceive our external environment and how we react internally. With such a dire realization we can go forth and make a New Year’s resolution out of getting our stress under control. 

Share it with others

This is a good tip for both keeping a New Year’s resolution and for making it important and meaningful. Making a New Year’s resolution with other people will hold them and you accountable.  Plus, it can make it more fun, thus heightening your (and your partner’s) odds at maintaining the resolution. 

Extra tips for keeping your New Year’s resolution

1  Think of it as a permanent change to your life rather than something you’re simply going to “try.” When you make a New Year’s resolution, you’re acknowledging that there’s something in your life that needs to change, and if you’re being honest with yourself, you probably want it to be permanently changed.

 2  It’s ok to have setbacks. Don’t let setbacks become excuses for abandoning your resolution altogether. If you slip and break your resolution, don’t be hard on yourself! This isn’t about perfectionism. It’s about steady growth. Keep the resolution and remember that habits take time to fully implement. 

 3  View your New Year’s resolution as an opportunity rather than a chore. View it as a fun activity or rewarding challenge rather than something you’re losing or missing out on. 

New Year’s is a good time to make a resolution because of how our calendar is so deeply embedded into our culture. January 1st naturally feels like a time of renewal and opportunity. In the process, we should realize that making and keeping resolutions are very different processes and should be treated as such. Making a resolution is often easy and can be done unmindfully. This can, unfortunately, increase the chances of it being lost. To keep New Year’s resolutions, we should first center them around the wellness of ourselves and the world. Next, we need to plan how we’ll maintain them.

Want to learn more ways to become your best self this year? Visit the TelMD Upstream Blog!

Let’s make wellness contagious!™️