Successfully Fulfilling Resolutions
After the holiday hoopla is over and the new year has begun many people find themselves trying to turn over a new leaf which can start with the creation of a esolutions. How often have you found yourself beginning to say or think “this year I am going to….” or “this year is the year I am [stopping, changing, starting, etc]”. How many of those resolutions have you fulfilled? If you said relatively few or even none, don’t beat yourself up. In fact, a recent University of Scranton study found that only 8% of people will succeed in their resolutions.
So what makes those 8% of people so successful?
Three things that can help you with successfully fulfilling resolutions are understanding the roots of your procrastination, creating micro-resolutions for yourself, and moving away from all or nothing thinking towards enjoying the journey as each small success occurs. Here is a quick step by step of what this all means for you and your goals:
1. The word PROCRASTINATION has a lot of negative judgement attached to it. When we procrastinate we can often think of ourselves of doing something wrong, and it can remind us of past experiences where we have felt guilty, anxious, lazy, stupid or perhaps a combination of these things. Sometimes we don't even want to start something because we remember procrastinating and we fear experiencing all those yucky feelings again.
What if instead of thinking about it in a negative way you instead try and understand why you are procrastinating. Ask yourself these questions to see what might be the underlying reason for your procrastination.
- Is the task relevant?
- Is the task a goal you have for yourself or something that another expects of you?
- Do you have unrealistic standards or perfectionistic thinking?
- Are the tasks ambiguous and you are unsure of how to accomplish it?
- Is it something new and there is fear behind the unknown?
- Is the task unrealistic for your abilities?
Once you understand the underlying cause you may be able to move forward by either discarding the goal and making a more appopriate one or having renewed motivation to accomplish it.
2. Create MICRO-RESOLUTIONS which are smaller more attainable goals that can be done daily and in a shorter amount of time. These might be smaller goals that will eventually get you to a larger goal but in the meantime will allow you to achieve some successes and create the habits you want.
For example: Saying you want to lose weight is a large and vague goal that almost sets you up for failure. Think about one part of losing weight, like getting more exercise. Setting a micro-resolution might be setting the goal of a 15 minute walk every day for 1 week. After a week check in to see how you did, take pride in what you were able to accomplish, and see if that resolution can be continued or added to. Stay focused on the small nuggets!
3. Move away from ALL or NOTHING THINKING. Examples of this thinking are that the only options are passing or failing or doing things right or wrong. Instead start thinking of your resolutions and goals in terms of progress. In the example of losing weight and setting the micro-resolution as taking a walk for a week. At the end of the week even if you only walked three out of the 7 days that is still progress. Allowing yourself to feel excitement and to take pride in the smaller accomplishments even if it wasn’t everything that you hoped will help you to stay on track. When you accept yourself for who you are and can celebrate the small accomplishments you are more likely to also enjoy the journey.