How to *Actually* Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions
Do you still make New Year’s resolutions, or have you sworn off the practice altogether on the grounds that it’s a silly tradition like Valentine’s Day?
I spent a couple of years resisting its potential import, loosely writing down some scrawl like “drink more water! teehee!” only to watch my water consumption dry out like the Sahara Desert throughout the year.
This past New Year’s, given the ample time I had to reflect, I resolved to take resolutions seriously again. I might also have been entirely prompted by Samin Nosrat’s interview with Tim Ferriss, in which she swears by writing in a “manifestation journal.”
Being a Samin devotee, I scrambled to get a crisp new Moleskine in my possession if only to write "manifestation journal" on it just like good old Samin Bean. Anyway, long story short, I just took a look at that journal (can’t believe it’s already been a YEAR!!), and my follow-through rate on my resolutions was 75%. Given that 92% of people never follow through on their New Years’ goals, I think this is pretttayyyyy pretttayyyyy prettty good.
Here’s what worked for me:
1. Make your WHY crystal clear. It’s incredibly easy to lapse back into old habits if you don’t have a why behind your what. Why do you want to drink more water? Is it to have glowier skin, so you don’t have to eat those useless Vital Proteins gummies? Why do you want a $20K raise? Will you use the money to travel around France frolicking in 18th century vineyards? If you feel yourself drifting away from a goal, remember to always return to your why. And importantly, make your WHY as vivid as possible.
2. Visualize your goals daily. The subconscious cannot distinguish between reality and imagination, so if your dream is to own an ice cream truck, mentally drive the ice cream truck until you’re actually driving it. Creating visuals gives your subconscious more fuel to run on, providing you with little nuggets of inspiration and excitement. Write down your goal, then build out your vision in greater detail.
3. Stack your goal on top of existing habits. If you want to stretch for 10 minutes at the end of each day but you just can’t commit, fold it into an existing habit. Stretch out those weary limbs while watching your favorite TV show, or listening to your favorite podcast. Is this a perfect zen stretch? No. Is it better than going to bed without taking care of yourself? Yes, and that's not even a stretch (pun intended). Which brings me to my next point:
4. Don’t neglect a good habit just because it’s imperfect. If your New Year’s resolution is to read two books a week, and you’ve got a mountain of books on your nightstand collecting dust, do away with the all-or nothing mentality. So long as you’re on the reading train nightly, you’re golden in my book (pun also intended). It doesn’t matter if you read a page or one-hundred pages–you’re still sticking to a habit, which is better than reading no pages at all. Even if you read just half a page a day, the good news is that one day you’ll finish that book!
5. Give your goals a timeline. Even if you don’t accomplish your goals in the time allotted, when you tell your brain you want to own five hundred Monets by December 31st, 2022, your brain will get right on it. Versus saying, yeah, one day that could be nice to own some lily frond paintings by that French dude. Don’t worry if you missed your mark. Keep going. In fact, the secret to turning short-term goals into long-term goals is to keep going!
6. Align short-term goals with long-term goals. If you want to start an ice cream truck full of happy pups, what are some actionable steps you can take each day or week to turn your dream into a reality? If you want to be a writer, are you writing for at least thirty minutes every day? Or are you in a Parisian café sharing your genius screenplay idea with a cute Frenchman who speaks no English? Don’t be afraid to just start, even if you can’t see how your chicken scratch in a moleskine could possibly turn into a book on chickens. Starting is half the battle. And here’s the part where I share an inspiring quote from Steve Jobs, which I think about often:
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”