By Lily Barr
When this is being published, it should be about a week after Quitters Day, which fell on January 17th this year. It marks the day when the majority of people have either quit or stopped their new years resolution. If you made a new years resolution and you’re still going strong then congratulations, but if not, then the rest of this article is for you!
One important thing is that if you ‘fail’, you can and should continue hacking away at your resolutions. For example, my new year’s resolution was to draw a little something everyday, even if it is just a small sketch. However, with school and extracurriculars I get pretty busy and don’t have time to do so. I could have thrown in the towel and given up, but instead I just drew longer the next day and continued. Even if you don’t “make it up,” continuing your resolution is always better than giving up on it.
This brings us to the next point of making new year’s resolutions that shouldn’t fall behind on. Since life is unpredictable it’s normal to not always be able to keep up with your resolutions, but a few of these parameters should help. Generally, your goals should be as specific as possible, rather than, ‘I want to get stronger’ do something like, ‘I want to lift x amount of pounds’ or ‘I want to go to the gym/workout x amount of times a week’. Second, make something realistic by knowing both yourself and your schedule. If it’s something that you’re pretty sure you can’t do amidst your busy life, you’re probably right. Third, create a plan to achieve your goal. I, personally, don’t think this is usually necessary, but, of course, it’s up to personal preference.
If you’re still struggling to keep up with your resolution, a good way to help is to have some form of accountability. This could be something like telling people about your goal, even posting it online with other people trying to accomplish the same or a similar goal. Next, you could track your progress. The exact method of doing this depends on the goal, but some way to show yourself that you’re making progress is a great way to stay motivated. Finally, reward yourself, have you kept up with your goal for a month or better yet 3? Then get a little something for yourself. You need to go all or nothing, treat yourself for doing good.
Hopefully, all of this will help you finally achieve your goals, but it doesn’t have to be a new year to improve yourself. Everything else mentioned here can be used for trying to achieve anything else, it’s just more topical to treat it as new year’s resolutions.