Have you made any new year’s resolutions for 2024? The new year is a great opportunity to make some changes, set yourself goals and feel motivated to achieve them. However, while we may feel energised and ready to go on January 1st, many of us give up on our resolutions before the first month of the year is even over.
Close to 14 million new year’s resolutions are made every year in the UK, however, by the 19th of January, statistics predict 40% of them will have already failed. Why are our good intentions slipping away so quickly? Let’s take a look at some common reasons that could be getting in the way of your success.
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1. Your goals aren’t clear enough
If you have any uncertainty surrounding your goals, it becomes much easier to give up on them. For any new year’s resolution you make, you should ask yourself:
- What do you want to achieve?
- Why do you want to achieve it and what makes it important?
- How will achieving this goal positively impact your life?
If your new year’s resolution is too vague, you’re leaving room for indifference and confusion. If this leads to failure, it will only make you feel bad. Ensure your goals are aligned with who you are and where you want to be in life so you can stick to them and move forward.
2. You overwhelm yourself
Making big changes can be daunting, but you may feel that you have to make them in order to achieve your new year’s resolution. You may be unsure about where to start, but feel pressured to do so and over time this pressure can lead to you feeling overwhelmed.
Instead of going straight in with a big change, it may be more manageable to create a road map of smaller steps and goals that will put you on the right path to where you want to be.
For example, over 620,000 people have signed up to try Veganuary this year which is fantastic. However, if you’re a meat-lover who has meat with every meal going cold turkey (excuse the pun) is likely to end in failure. Instead of jumping straight in at the deep end and finding it too difficult, try to think of smaller steps you could take to build up to becoming vegan. For instance, each week you could task yourself with creating a new vegan meal that you will add to your regular menu and gradually build up your repertoire so you will hardly notice the change if you decide you commit fully to being vegan.
3. You aren’t patient
While it would be wonderful if we could magically achieve all our goals in no time, unfortunately, we usually have to work hard if we want to reach them. When you set your new year’s resolutions you need to be realistic about your time frames and what you’re expecting of yourself. You don’t want to get impatient, start questioning why you made your resolution in the first place and then give up on it.
If you do find yourself starting to question your goals further down the line, you have a few options. You could soldier on as you are, give up, or take some time to re-evaluate your process. While you may have had a clear method in mind for how you wanted to achieve your goal, if it’s not working you may need to make a change or simply give yourself more time to see the results.
4. You’re not ready to change
While you may be interested in making a change for the new year, you should ask yourself whether you’re really ready for it. Really thinking about the what, where, when and why of your goals should help you to establish if you are ready to commit to them. Those who aren’t ready for change will find themselves making excuses as to why they can’t stick to their goals and will quickly let them slide.
It’s ok if you don’t have the motivation and dedication to stick to a certain goal at this time. What’s key is focusing on the most important things to you right now and goals relating to these will be more achievable.
Bringing it all together
Setting yourself personal and professional goals is a great way to stay focused, motivated and successful. What’s important though, is that you don’t set yourself up for failure by not planning and thinking them through thoroughly.
What are your new year’s resolutions for this year? Do you think you will stick to them? Leave us a comment below sharing your thoughts!
Totally. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Advice to always store in the arsenal.
People set themselves New Year’s resolutions without really thinking it through, which is a guaranteed failure. I’ve never set myself a New Year’s resolution simply because of the extremely high fail rate. If you’re not willing to plan how to reach you goal, then you don’t really want to do it.