This article will alter your perspective of New Year’s resolutions. By reading to its conclusion, you’ll be better equipped to achieve change and enhance your life.

Many may fear their New Year’s resolutions are destined for failure, yet while this may be true for some individuals, many do succeed and don’t end up as broken as imagined.

Unsuccessful resolutions fail because they focus too heavily on outcomes over process. If your resolution to lose weight without creating an effective daily regimen to promote it falters by mid-January, your success may already have vanished into thin air.

Today you will learn how to avoid that problem. Before doing that, let’s review some science.

What Research Tells Us about New Year’s Resolutions
Popular reports claim that up to 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February; however, its source remains elusive.

Research done on this subject reveals a different story. Consider two of its results as proof.

A 2002 study discovered that 46% of 159 resolvers successfully kept their resolutions after six months; 55% of 1066 resolvers from 2020’s study succeeded at doing the same over one year (resolutions mostly focused on diet, fitness and behavioral changes such as weight loss or smoking cessation).
An impressive 46-55% reported success rate is certainly impressive when compared with the “80% fail by February” meme. What could possibly explain these high success rates?

One answer was that participants had an effective means of keeping their New Year’s resolutions. That system included enrolling in a study program that regularly checked on them like a schoolteacher would check homework assignments.

Resolutions often provide the spark, but keeping to them requires an effective plan. Unfortunately, most resolutions fail without adequate support systems to keep them going.

Why Do New Year’s Resolutions Fail? Brushing your teeth daily should not be seen as something to be resolved through resolution; rather, it should become part of a habit and its routine part of an overall system for success.

Systematically incorporating daily dental hygiene may involve: Accessibility for toothbrushes and paste

Ambitious goals often create negative feedback loops; every day that goes by without you reaching your goal can be emotionally draining.

Even if you reach your goal, it won’t solve the underlying issue; at best it might bring temporary satisfaction before transitioning back into an aimless void state or worse yet, backsliding.

Systems, habits, and routines are the answer. Working your systems daily provides easy wins while moving you toward the outcomes that matter to you.

If your aim is to lose weight, your system might include forgoing dessert, walking five miles daily, abstaining from alcohol consumption, and keeping junk food out of the house. If this system doesn’t seem to be yielding results, focus on changing it instead of your goals.

Tactics to Keep Your Resolutions Stick
In order to be successful at keeping New Year’s resolutions, you need a strategy. Here are four tactics that should help get you on your journey.

1: Set Reasonable Goals

It is important to set reasonable resolutions that stretch but don’t overburden you, otherwise they could land you stranded out there in space without proper protection. Some examples will help clarify.

Goal of extreme ambition: Lose 75 pounds by summer.

Goal – Reduce weight by summer

Goal is ambitious: Marry Scarlett Johansson

Goal: Set more dates.

Overly ambitious goal: Look like Chris Hemsworth from Thor.

Reasonable Goal: Increase the number of push-ups that you can complete each day.

Perhaps your reasonable goals require more specificity; while that is an option, flexible goals tend to be more sustainable and should remain realistic and reasonable.

2: Track Your Progess Once you have set reasonable goals, measure and track your progress toward them. As with anything, what gets measured gets managed.

Progress tracking could be one of the keys to high success rates among New Year’s resolution studies, keeping individuals accountable and on task with their resolutions.

One 2008 study demonstrated this as well: participants who kept food journals lost twice as much weight than non-journaling controls.

Carb Manager provides an easy way to monitor health and fitness goals.

3: Engage OthersWant to achieve your goal? Tell others! Social pressure keeps you accountable.

Social support can help keep spirits high; encouraging words from loved ones can go a long way to lifting mood.

Joining the Carb Manager community and taking on its challenge can help you reap some of its benefits, speeding up results.

4: Take Control of Your Environment

A wise life philosophy dictates taking charge of what can be controlled and accepting what can’t. Your environment falls under this heading of what can be managed.

Here are a few examples: : (Kitchen) By stocking it with healthy foods; (B) Clear your workspace of clutter by keeping a clear desk; (C) Make use of basement space by creating a home gym; and (D) Create more headspace by eliminating screens from bedroom and so forth

What Are Alternative Resolutions for New Years?

The New Year presents an ideal opportunity to set resolutions. Since everyone else is doing it too, you’ll gain momentum by joining their ranks and taking part in their movement.

Consider being more systematic with your efforts at self-improvement. Once you have an ongoing system in place, no need for resolutions on January 1st!

Your system should encompass both short- and long-term plans. Your long-term vision, goals, etc. should guide the actions detailed in your weekly and daily plans. Watch this video by best-selling productivity author Cal Newport on multi-scale planning to gain some inspiration for daily and weekly plans.