5 QUICK TIPS TO KEEP YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION GOING

Dr Shane Smith, PT, DPT
December 31, 2023

This time of year, many people are looking forward to the start of a new year for various reasons. Some feel this is the year that they will get into shape and lose the weight they have been wanting to lose forever, others may want greater financial successes in the new year. Maybe getting a home renovation project completed or fixing a part of your body that has been bothering you and limiting your quality of life. Whatever your goal is this new year research shows that the vast majority of us do not successfully complete our new year’s resolution. A study looked into how many of those that set a new year’s resolution succeed and achieving it, and the study found only 19% completed the goals they set out to achieve at the start of the year. That leaves 81% of us out there failing to reach our goals this new year, but that sad stat doesn’t have to include you. If you follow these five quick tips to keep your resolution going well past December of 2024 they will soon become habit and part of the new and improved you. The biggest take away from New Year’s resolutions are the personal commitment to self to commit to something not easily attainable for an entire year. It is never fully about the specific thing you are trying to achieve it’s more about the commitment to do something for a year without stopping. Can you stay mentally committed to the goal, and have the personal accountability even when challenges arise. Over the last few years I have learned successful concepts to keep me on pace with achieving my resolution’s, and I’m going to share those with you today to hopefully give you better strategies to succeed with your resolution goals.

Make your goal Real and Reasonable

One of the most important things to setting a New Year’s resolution is to keep it Real and Reasonable. Make the goal achievable and have monthly, and weekly mini goals as steps to achieving this main goal. To set a goal such as “be a better person” may sound great in your head, but that type of goal becomes very difficult for you to measure and to track weekly or monthly for progress. A good goal example would be “to lose 20 pounds this year”. That can be numerically tracked weekly and or monthly to set up steps of progress towards your main goal. Achieving smaller easier more reasonable goals allows you to keep motivation up and allow for a more likely success with your resolutions. I think setting easier goals to start is best and working to a bigger goal once the initial is achieved is another great way to get more success out of your resolutions.

Link your goal to your Habits

Another great option to improve your success with achieving resolution’s is to link it to an existing habit you do daily or weekly. For example, if your goal is to stay up on current events, or learn more about nutrition to better your overall health. You can choose to do this with time that you already have, such as driving in the car or getting breakfast ready in the morning. Both of these activities are going to be done on a daily basis, all you have to do is remember to hit play on your podcast while you’re in the car driving or while you are cooking. This will keep the learning time consistent and predictable. Once you have listened or done your learning periodically attempt to put your new knowledge to use and see how much progress you have made.

Keep others in the loop to maintain Accountability

One of the most effective tools to maintain and fulfill goals is to establish multiple sources of accountability. These points of accountability can be both internal and external. If friends or loved ones are in the loop on your goals from the start and are told why this resolution is important to you and ask them to periodically ask about how progress is going throughout the year, it will help with keeping you on task throughout the year even when fulfilling the goals seems out of reach. Those that know us best have a better time at helping up stay motivated when times get hard. Also keeping yourself accountable internally is a must for achieving your New Year’s resolution. You must establish ways to motivate yourself, and everyone is different in this light. Some do better with positive motivation, while others need to beat themselves up a bit with negativity to motivate change. Whatever is your direction of personal accountability go in it and don’t stop. Setting reminders in your room, or bathroom where you will see them on a daily basis as well as try to set reminders on your phone weekly or daily for the entire year with some message to yourself that will remind you why you are doing this, and why you need to keep going. Accountability is key to achieving the outcome of any goal you set in life.

Accept success comes in small steps not all at once

When I speak with my patient’s about Physical Therapy results, I always try and judge progress in small steps towards their goal of return to a normal life again without pain. We know if we are expecting progress by small changes in pain rating and ability to perform activities in everyday life with less problem we will stay motivated and optimistic about achieving our big goals. The same process should be applied to our new year’s resolution goals. By establishing a realistic and reasonable goal we should be able to track progress by some measurement or metric to track progress and change over time. If weight loss and the ability to fit into old clothes are the goals, then how many inches in the waist need to be lost, or how many total pounds need to be lost to achieve it? Divide the total amount of either weight or inches you hope you lose by 12, and that will be your monthly goal. If the steps towards your goal are visible and achievable the end goal becomes much easier to see. The idea of a weight loss goal of 24 pounds over the year, which would be equivalent to losing three inches around your waist, may seem extremely hard, but if I told you that is just two pounds a month that may make the overall goal seem much more attainable when looking at success in smaller more attainable steps.

Manage your Mindset and remember your Why for doing this

Changing your mindset isn’t easy and for 89% of people that start New Year’s Resolutions they are not able to change their mindset on maintaining accountability and developing a plan for success they fail. Habitual activities such as putting your seatbelt on when getting in a vehicle or performing morning grooming tasks in a certain order everyday just occur because it is such a routine task. If someone asked you why you do that, you would just say its habit. When our mindset on a tasks switches to habit it becomes very easy to do that task, and keep doing. On average it takes someone 2,000 times to do or to think about a task to make it habit. If you are giving yourself positive affirmations multiple times a day about your goals, and what you need to be doing step by step to achieve it, you will mentally change your perception on achieving that goal in a very positive reaffirming way.

Keeping these principles in mind I know everyone can and will succeed setting new year’s resolutions, and will have much more confidence due to these planning steps. If this year you need to get help to achieve your goals, then take that step to ensure your success. As discussed above with weight loss options, maybe committing to a Nutritionist for supervision and advice, or a life coach may pave the way to success. If your goal is improvement in pain and dysfunction in body movement then a Physical Therapist may be the right support to achieve your true long-term goals. If you are in the Naples, FL area we are always available to help with those pain and movement problems. We are offering this season to five people Free sessions to discover what’s the cause of your pain and movement issues. Please give us a call if you want to talk about what is needed to get out of pain.

Email: Info@naplespremierpt.com
Phone: (239)919-3510
Website: www.Naplespremierpt.com