How To: Stick To Your New Year’s Resolutions

We are now almost a week into 2013 and I am already seeing friends and family complain about slipping on their resolutions.

It is a phenomenon that happens every year without fail!

I think studies show that something around a staggering 80% of all resolutions are unsuccessful; and while the science behind why your brain goes into cognitive overload when you lay down all those well-intentioned resolutions on your frontal lobe is fascinating, I want to focus on something a little more useful to my readers.

How to Not Suck at New Year’s Resolutions!

That’s right Jerdlings, let’s break down what to do (and not to do) when it comes to this yearly cycle of fail and guilt.

I am sure you already have your list of resolutions, either in your head or scribbled on a piece of paper hanging on your refrigerator, but let’s take a few minutes to look at why you might be setting yourself up for a morale crushing failure; and even better yet let’s use this as an opportunity to revamp them in a way that will make you successful!

So how exactly do you stick to your New Year’s resolutions? Well, it isn’t a simple answer unfortunately. The first thing to remember is that any sort of goal setting behavior requires a certain amount of willpower and despite popular thought, the brain is not wired for success in that department. You have to train it, much like you have to train your body for exercise!

Just like your muscles have to be trained to grow stronger, the prefrontal cortex in your brain does too. The key is to not start lifting too heavy!

So much like any other goal setting activity, it is important to not overwhelm yourself (For basic goal setting advice go read this outstanding article!) with too many changes all at once. The more balls you are trying to juggle the more willpower you are going to need, and the more likely you will be to fail if you haven’t already boosted your Willpower stat too an epic level.

So keeping that in mind here are my patented steps for making realistic, and achievable, New Year’s resolutions!

Limit your aspirations – Like I said above, your willpower muscle is probably a weakling. The mental equivalent of that kid in the 70s Charles Atlas comic book ads; you know, the one where the scrawny kid at the beach gets sand kicked in his face by the mean bully. So just like that kid can’t go to the gym and start doing 200 lbs bench press reps, you can’t load your brain up with stacks of goals. So my advice is to limit yourself to no more than two goals at first; and make sure that they are very different from each other so they don’t ever fight for attention at the same time!

Resolve to change habits – All too often, the inability to stick to your New Year’s Resolutions is a direct result of their poor construction. Resolutions are usually ambiguous and don’t directly point to a specific habit you are trying to change, so what we want to do is take whatever resolution you pick and make sure its focus is on changing a bad habit. Here is an example:

Sucky Resolution: “I want to drink less soda.” Non-quantifiable, and doesn’t address a particular habit.

Awesome Resolution: “Instead of drinking my daily 3pm pick-me-up soda at work, I will eat an apple and take a five-minute stroll around the office.”

See the difference?

Here are my tips for successful habit building!

Take baby steps – Just like you can’t walk into the gym on your first day and lift weights like an Olympian, you can’t expect to change a veritable ton of stuff about yourself all at once at the stroke of midnight! So take those one or two things you want to focus on and make sure to break them down as far as you can, to the simplest tasks/habits possible. The less complicated you make it, the easier it will be to stay on track.

Make it public – The more accountability you place on yourself the better. By telling your friends and/or family about your resolutions (or putting them out their on Social Media), you place an additional layer of responsibility on yourself; not to mention you now have enabled people in your life to help keep you on track.

Surround yourself with like-minded people – Something to remember is that willpower is contagious; when you surround yourself with like-minded people you exponentially increase your chance for success. There have been multiple studies done that prove the people around you can have a significant impact on your behavior. So if you make it a habit to spend time in the presence of people who exhibit the traits you are aspiring to for yourself, you are much more likely to succeed. Success breeds success!

That all being said, don’t be afraid to re-evaluate your New Years Eve declarations (we are only a week in, no-one will notice) and come up with some better ones less destined to epically fail. I promise you with these tips you will be better suited to stick to your New Year’s resolutions!

So what New Year’s Resolutions have you set for yourself, and is there anything I can do to help you stick to them?!? Drop me a comment below!

(Photo #2 credit)

PS: Make sure to get your free e-book, “The 7 Fitness Obstacles Newbies Face” by subscribing to our newsletter… no spam, I promise!

PPS: Also check out our YouTube channel (if you want access to our Nerd-Core Fitness exercise videos), follow me on Twitter, and like us on Facebook and Google+ (there is content on both not available here on the site.) There are many different ways for you to get your daily dose of Jerdly goodness so don’t miss out!