Many people at the beginning of the year are hopeful for changes to occur for themselves in the following 12 months. People resolve to make changes, but often times the resolutions lose their luster by the time March rolls around. Why don’t these changes stick? Here are a few things to think about if you’re serious about creating change in your life.
- Think about the purpose your current behaviors are serving. All behaviors, good or bad, serve a purpose. We wouldn’t continue engaging in a behavior if we didn’t get something out of it, would we? If your resolution is to stick to a budget and stop spending money so impulsively, ask yourself why you spend money frivolously. People sometimes spend money to satisfy an emotional need; they don’t call it “retail therapy” for nothing! But everyone who has experienced the high of a shopping spree has also felt the crash of their credit card bill the following month. Are there other ways to ease those feelings of sadness other than putting yourself further and further into debt? Develop a plan to satisfy your emotional needs in a positive way to help you stick to your resolutions.
- Set realistic goals for yourself. A common resolution is to get back in the gym and live a healthier life. Are you expecting to hit the gym 5 days a week if you’ve been used to sitting on the couch for the last 2 years? Set small achievable goals in the beginning. Perhaps for the first month you may want to have a goal of going to the gym 2 days a week for 30 minutes each time. As you become more consistent, you can begin to set the bar higher. The point of this is to experience the feeling of success at achieving a goal, however small it may be. Many people feel discouraged and don’t follow through on their resolutions because they’ve set the bar too high for such a short period of time. I tell people frequently: you can’t expect to run a marathon in the first week if you’ve never ran in your life.
- Develop a specific plan on how to achieve your goal. If you are thinking of going back to school, what are the steps you need to do to get there? Look at your finances, how will that work into your schedule, etc. This also ties into what I mentioned earlier about setting small, achievable goals. It can be helpful to develop a timeline; “by January 31st I will have decided on 3 different schools to look at; by March 31st I will have developed a financial plan for becoming a student; by April 30th I will have submitted my first school application, etc.”
- Have faith in yourself. What is your core belief about yourself? People often get discouraged, believing that they can never achieve their desired goal. I truly believe that anything is possible it’s just a matter of how hard you are willing to work and what you are willing to sacrifice. If you don’t believe that you can accomplish something then that belief will generally be fulfilled.
Of course, you don’t have to wait until the New Year or a Monday to start creating change. Use the momentum of your desire to push you towards change. Change is difficult; the things I’ve listed above are not easy at all because it requires a bit of self-reflection and planning. I believe the most important part is the last point: having faith in you. It’s an amazing experience to have when you push yourself to the very edge where you question your ability to accomplish a goal and then you achieve it! How surprising it is to find that inner strength you never knew you had! If you find yourself falling back into old habits, don’t be discouraged. With any sort of change, you have to expect “relapse.” Isn’t this where that cliché comes from: “old habits die hard”? The point is acknowledging that you’ve fallen into old habits and then getting back onto that new path of change. Eventually, through repetition these changes will become new habits. Take your time and remember to enjoy the journey of change rather than focusing too intensely on the goal itself.