Every year you do it. You tell yourself you are going to do something extraordinary; 'I'm going to be healthier, 'I'm going to read more, 'I'm going to do more yoga.' When your hangover subsides, you go all in, completely changing your life to get there. But slowly, as the weeks go on, you get tired, lose motivation, and stop trying because the results are nowhere in sight. Does this sound all too familiar? Yup, you aren't alone; Discover Happy Habits reported that only 9% feel they successfully kept their New Year's Resolution. Shocking, I know.
Resolutions Suck. No magic flip you switch on January 1st can sustainably make you a whole new person. Minor improvements, compounded on one another, make a HUGE impact over time. So start making changes using these four steps.
Make it actionable
Be healthier, read more, or do more yoga. Those are ideas; what is "be healthier?" it's not actionable or measurable. So how are you going to achieve it? You aren't; that's the problem.
Make it an action.
Do you want to meditate more? You want to meditate for 20 minutes.
Do you want to be healthier? You want to lose 20 pounds.
Do you want to do more yoga? You want to take a 60-minute yoga class.
Break it down
You can't expect to add 20 minutes of meditation on day 1. You can, however, meditate for 5 minutes for the first week of the year. Then add a minute every week until you get to 20 minutes.
Do you want to meditate for 20 minutes a day? Start with 5 minutes of meditation.
Do you want to lose 20 pounds? Start with 1 pound.
Do you want to take a 60-minute yoga class? Try doing 10 minutes of yoga.
Schedule it into your routine
Put it on your calendar and into your schedule. We often need to change our whole life when we set goals. The best success is when we layer it into our life along with what we already have going on. Only sign up for sunrise yoga if you are a morning person. You know it will be dreadful and make trying something new even harder to succeed if the mornings aren't for you. Figure out when and what is best for you. Use the first few months of the year to try things out and see what works for you.
Add 5 minutes of meditation before you go to sleep.
Schedule a walk during lunch (maybe on a treadmill for northerners).
Do 10 minutes of yoga right when you wake up.
Celebrate your wins
Small wins produce results, but we often overlook the small victories because we have yet to arrive. Hi, it's me. I am the 'we' in that last statement. Instead of being happy, I meditated five days a week. I would be pissed that I missed two days of meditation. But hey! Last year I was doing zero a week, so isn't that still progress? Damn, right it is. Every week, check-in.
Did you do yoga two times for 10 minutes? That's progress.
Did you work out three times and skip late-night pizza? That sounds like progress to me.
**Bonus here** DO NOT! Beat yourself up when you don't knock it out of that park. That only makes you give up. Instead, accept the loss and hit it tomorrow.
Summary
Every New Year's Eve, we devise a great idea and call it a resolution. But this year, we are going to do better than last year. We will create action, break it down, schedule it, make progress and celebrate it.
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