Why new year resolutions don’t work?

Making new year's resolutions isn’t new, in fact, it dates back to 4000-year-old Babylon.

Although Babylonians didn’t do it on the 1st of Jan but in Mid March for their spring harvest barley festival called Akitu.

This trend continues with its changed form and 2023 won’t be any different.

Some of the most common resolutions for people all across are:

• Regular exercise

• Eating the right food

• Losing weight

• Reading more books

• Quitting addictive habits like smoking or drinking etc

While these are all noble things to pursue, however, when it comes to statistics almost 50% of people fail in their pursuits and get back to their old selves.

The Journal of Clinical Psychology published a study which says that not more than 46% of people making new year's resolutions are successful. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11920693/)

There must be something wrong all this while for all those years which the majority of the people have been missing and failing to realise as far as achieving their goals is concerned, isn’t it?

Let’s look at some of the reasons before zeroing in on that one thing:

While these are all valid reasons, there is one top attribute among this:

LACK OF CONSISTENCY

People forget that every action or non-action has its Compound Effect i.e every action when done repeatedly over a period of time brings results exponentially.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR RESOLUTIONS WORK FOR YOU:

Goal identification: Single out the things which need your urgent and immediate attention, for example, losing weight as it pertains to health.

Make a strategy: Dividing the goals into months and weeks and journaling everyday actions is highly important. Also, when goals are broken down, in months and weeks, it looks more achievable to the mind.

Make a routine: Making a routine is the most interesting thing when you are highly motivated especially at the time of making the resolution. Things look easy and executable and many times people don’t take into account the reality of their behaviour.

But you can’t escape this part, you gotta do what you gotta do.

The most important part of achieving the goal is:

Sticking to the routine: This one takes the cake as far as achieving any goal is concerned. Personally, if I know by doing certain actions every day I am gonna get the results I desire, I will do it ( if that’s my deep desire).

This is the most difficult thing to do because people are driven by their moods, and once it’s understood that mood is nothing but being in the comfort zone and the risk of not achieving the goal is high, people can come out of it. Stick to the routine no matter what and you will see a change which you didn’t anticipate all this while.

Get yourself an accountability partner: An accountability partner is someone who is on a similar journey and understands how important it is to stick to a particular routine. Accountability partner, keeps a check on your actions on a weekly basis and makes you accountable for your actions and gives you a reality check without sugarcoating things because he/she wants you to succeed and not, please.

Good luck!