Our Ultimate Guide on How to Make and Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

According to recent research, less than 15% of people actually stick to their resolutions for a whole year. While change is hard, that doesn’t mean it’s completely impossible! If you’re wondering how to make and stick to a New Year’s resolution, it’s time to take a look at these top tips from the team at Green Gone Detox.

Where Are Your Resolutions Failing

Learning how to keep a New Year’s resolution means looking back at why you haven’t been succeeding. Here are a few reasons you might be having trouble.

1. Setting Vague or Unrealistic Goals

So you tell yourself you want to lose weight or quit smoking weed, but you don’t get specific enough with the details. There’s no guidance, no step-by-step solution to this goal. Without a detail-oriented guide, you have no real place to start.

2. No Goal Tracking

Many people set big New Year’s resolutions that take time to achieve. These goals require slow, gradual changes, which may result in feeling like you’re not making any progress – so you give up! Keeping a record of your progress can help motivate you. Check-in with yourself each week to see how many pounds you’ve lost or whether your body is weed-free.

Even if you slip up every now and then, instead of flipping a table and giving up, you can zoom out and look at the big picture, where you’re still on the right track to success.

3. Setting Goals with No Purpose

Why you make resolutions is just as important as how you make your New Year’s resolutions. You might say you want to eat healthier or stop drinking, but without a solid reason, it’s too easy to talk yourself out of your goals.

In order to implement lasting change and ensure your success in how you keep New Year’s resolutions, thoughtfully consider the pros and cons of making the change to guarantee your commitment.

4. Setting Too Many Goals

The New Year leads to a lot of optimism and energy that’s tough to maintain throughout the year. You’re envisioning your success and feel like you can take on the world, so you make tons of resolutions to achieve all your desires.

When you spread yourself too thin, you’ll inevitably fail at one of your resolutions, tanking your morale and possibly causing a downslide for the rest of your goals.

Setting Yourself Up for Success

So we’ve covered why you might fail to keep your New Year’s resolutions. Now is the time to talk about how to make and keep your New Year’s resolutions.

1. Focusing on Micro-Goals

There’s no shame in starting small! Keeping your New Year’s resolutions may mean smaller goals that are easier to achieve. If one of your goals is to work out more, don’t make your resolution about going for an hour run every day. That’s such a daunting place to start! Work your way up from short home workouts to walks after dinner, and eventually, you’ll create a sustainable workout routine that will become a natural part of your life.

Once a micro-goal becomes a habit, you can ramp up your goals to bigger things!

2. Making SMART Goals

We’re not talking about smart as in intelligent; we mean SMART, the acronym. This phrase stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Based. With a framework like SMART, you can get past micro-goals and into bigger resolutions.

How you make your New Year’s resolutions must address each of the SMART categories in order to be successful.

3. Chasing Success

One of the most interesting results from a study about goals shows that resolutions that require actively doing something have a higher success rate than avoidant goals. So going to the gym three times a week is easier than quitting smoking.

When you have avoidance goals on your resolution list, make them about achieving something specific. Instead of saying you’ll stop drinking soda, specify your goal to drink only two cans per week. Instead of saying you’ll quit smoking cannabis cold turkey, aim to microdose once or twice a week. Now you have something to check off of a list in a way that’s motivational.

4. Logging Your Progress

Keeping track of success is an essential part of how to keep New Year’s resolutions. Seeing your progress will motivate you to keep going, and it doesn’t matter how you keep track. Whether you’ve got a notebook or a spreadsheet, enjoy checking in on how you’re doing to boost your morale and stay mindful of your goals!

5. Making Accountability Appointments

According to studies, when you have someone to keep you accountable for your goals, your success rate will skyrocket. It goes up to a 95% chance of success! Telling just one or two people about your goals and asking them to help keep you on track is a game changer.

Make an appointment to check in with them every couple of weeks and discover the best trick to how you keep your New Year’s resolutions.

6. Loving the Process

For many people, resolutions and goals are lifelong things. You don’t suddenly reach a goal and then never think about it again. Maintenance is key to most of the goals you set – even after achieving them. So how do you stick to your New Year’s resolutions beyond the goals?

Part of the answer is loving the process. If you love what you’re doing to achieve and maintain your goals, it’s easier to stay motivated and make these things a permanent part of your everyday life.

Final Thoughts

Now that you have some ideas on how to keep your New Year’s resolutions, you can set yourself up for success in January. But have you ever considered that the New Year is an arbitrary date to start on your journey? We believe that you can commit to change whenever you want! Choose a different date to start working on yourself that works better for your life and goals to find motivation all year round.