Welcome back to a new year! Have you made any resolutions yet? For some New Year's resolutions may feel completely over-the-top or useless. As for others, you might have made some personal resolutions to achieve over the course of the year.
The concept of resolutions has often been treated as an excuse. But I love New Years; everyone around the world has their own way of celebrating the end of 2018 with the hope of a new chance for 2019. Hence, New Year’s resolutions tend to be popular because they represent a chance to start over.
Surely I’m not the only one who doesn’t know how to set a proper goal. Here are some guidelines for setting good New Year’s resolutions.
First of all, we need to be considerate of who we are. Here’s to working on self-awareness in 2019. Answer the following questions: How far are you willing to go to obtain your goals for 2019? How serious is your goal? Can you match up to the level of expectations to achieve your goal(s)?
More often than not, we can’t answer simple questions like these because we are not being intentional with our goals.
A goal is essential to refocusing in the new year and figuring out who we are. Our goals are set based on the standards of who we want to be. But here’s a wake-up call: we are not magically living the lives we dream of just because we set goals. We must be realistic to who we are at the moment the decision is made.
This process is different and somewhat difficult for every individual. While you must be honest with yourself about your own limits, it’s also important to give yourself a realistic time period to achieve your goals.
While there is a common myth that it takes 21 days to form a habit, new research from the European Journal of Social Psychology shows that a habit develops, on average, within two months. So, don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t get your routine down this month. In addition to habit forming, the research revealed that it did not matter if the participant made a mistake as long as they kept maintaining the habit afterwards.
What a breath of fresh air. This makes resolutions so much more bearable. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. It’s more important to keep going afterward. If two months seem like a long time, it’s short in comparison to the additional 10 months you’re about to conquer. There’s an opportunity to achieve many things over the course of one year. Do not rush to the destination without enjoying the journey of learning about yourself.
Let 2019 change you slowly, realistically and unexpectedly. Let it surprise you in a way that makes you proud of who you are.