How to Set Realistic Resolutions

Every year, people all over the country set New Year’s resolutions. From going to the gym five days a week to cutting back on spending to journaling for thirty minutes a day, there’s no limit to the goals that you can make for yourself.

However, the challenge comes with actually sticking to those goals. You may find that you have lofty aspirations for the year, but when you make resolutions that are too far beyond your normal habits, they are harder to keep. To increase the likelihood of sticking to New Year’s resolutions, one thing you can do is establish realistic expectations.

Why do we make resolutions?

While the practice of making New Year’s resolutions is thought to date back to the ancient Babylonians, today’s resolutions often aren’t quite on Babylonian levels. Instead of vowing to the gods, you tend to now make promises to yourself. Resolutions allow you to look back on the previous year and examine what you liked and disliked about it. They offer a chance to not repeat the same mistakes and to adjust habits to help you reach a larger goal since the New Year is a blank slate with new opportunities.

But if this practice is one that’s been continued for thousands of years, the question becomes why the vows are often not kept. In fact, a 2020 PLOS ONE study found that only 55 percent of participants successfully completed their New Year’s resolutions. Research shows that first making and working toward a resolution triggers a dopamine release, a natural reward system within your body. But, after a while, the dopamine release drops off, and you no longer feel as rewarded for working toward the goal. So if you’re setting goals that are too grand or not clearly defined, it’s then harder to keep striving to meet them when you don’t have that same chemical response. To help you achieve them, there are a few practical steps you can take.

Be specific with your goals
When setting a resolution, your first step should be to clearly define what it is that you want to accomplish. If your goal is to eat healthier in the New Year, how are you going to do that? Do you want to eat more fresh produce, cut back on fast food, or cook three meals a day? Your goals need to be specific so that you can understand exactly what you’re setting out to do.

You can also define how long you want to work toward your resolutions. While it might be traditional to say you want to do something for the full year, that’s not the only option available. You can set smaller resolutions for every month, three months, or six months. These are your personal goals, so you can make them for whatever and however long you want. After you’ve clearly defined what you want to do and for what length, be sure to write them down somewhere (perhaps in a journal, as detailed below) so that you can reference back to them throughout the year.

Remember the motivations behind your goals
When setting your resolutions, think about what it is that you want to do and why you want to do it. There’s generally a reason we set goals, a motivation that comes from wanting to grow in one area or another. So consider what that reason is. When you fully understand the underlying motivation, you can better understand yourself and why you want to accomplish these specific resolutions.

Create a path toward your goals
It’s important that you make your goals realistic enough for you to accomplish them this year. A good way of doing this is to consider the small steps that will get you to each larger goal. For example, if you want to make new friends this year, start by going to a local coffee shop, bookstore, or farmers market. These places allow you to interact with a variety of people, which can, in turn, broaden your social skills and help you meet even more people. These small steps create a path toward your goal and allow you to celebrate the small victories along the way. It may be cliché, but resolutions are often less about the final destination and more about the journey to get there.

Keep track of your progress
Achieving resolutions does require a certain level of determination, so tracking and measuring your progress is a good way to keep yourself motivated since you know exactly where you’re going and far you have left to get there. You can track your progress by keeping a journal throughout the year, where you’ll write down all you have accomplished and what you still need to do. Much like celebrating the small victories along the way, this allows you to rejoice in the smaller wins throughout the year.

Change or adapt your goals
Though you’ll jot down your goals and define what it is that you want to accomplish, they’re not necessarily set in stone. It is OK to adapt or modify your resolutions throughout the year. If you find that you’re not keeping to a goal, consider what’s not working for you and what’s inhibiting you from meeting it, and adapt accordingly. This gives you the flexibility to learn from yourself and your habits, and, ultimately, it will help you to not repeat what you’ve done in the past.

New Year’s resolutions can help us to grow in many areas of our lives, so it’s important that you start the year with realistic goals that you can accomplish. It’s a clear way of setting yourself up for success.