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We’re two weeks into the New Year, and 25% of us have already abandoned our New Year’s resolutions.
We’re off to a good start in January. We vow to lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more, acquire financial control, or overall have a more optimistic mindset. Some of us have no trouble sticking to our resolutions.
According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology by researcher John Norcross, around 50% of adults will make a resolve every New Year.
But, for many of us, quickly after the New Year, a week, two, or even a month later, we begin to revert to our old habits, finally forgetting about our resolutions.
Why is it that so many individuals struggle to follow through?
Researchers have examined this behaviour in order to determine why it occurs. Is it just a case of individuals being weak-willed? Or are they simply sluggish?
Resolutions are a strategy to motivate yourself to break a bad habit. However, if you are not prepared to alter your behaviour, especially a harmful one, the failure rate will be high. Another explanation might be that when we make our resolutions, we establish unreasonable expectations and ambitions for ourselves.
“The ‘false hope syndrome,'” according to psychology professor Peter Herman, “means their resolve is considerably unrealistic and out of harmony with their internal sense of themselves.” In other words, positive affirmations will not work if you do not truly feel you can attain your objective.
Another part of broken resolutions is your expectation that it would transform your entire life. You may believe that losing weight or paying off your debts would transform your life, but when it doesn’t, you grow disheartened and revert to your old habits.
A resolve is essentially a desire to alter something. And in order to change, you must work at it and shift your perspective.
This tutorial will explain why you fail to keep your resolutions and how to get back on track. You will also learn how to combine healthy food and exercise into your everyday routine.
Let’s get this party started.
Why Do People Fail to Keep Their New Year’s Resolutions?
Every year, around 40% of individuals in the United States make a New Year’s Resolution. Only approximately a quarter of them will have broken one or more of them within two weeks. According to John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton and author of Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions, the failure rate rises to 50% by the end of January.
The top five resolutions made each year, according to Norcross, are:
• Loss of weight
• Improve your finances
• Exercise
• Look for a new employment.
• Eating more healthily
Weight loss, exercise, and eating healthily are the simplest of these five.
What is the average length of time that someone keeps their resolution?
75 percent of participants kept their resolution during the first week.
71 percent of persons in the last two weeks
64 percent of persons in the last month
46 percent of people in the last six months
According to these figures, an alarming amount of people fail to keep their resolutions.
In fact, it is anticipated that 75% of all New Year’s resolutions will fail.
So, if we’re so motivated to make a change at the start of a new year, why do so many people fail to follow through?
Why Do We Fail?
Over half of those who set New Year’s resolutions have already abandoned at least one of them six months later. Why?
Here are some suggestions:
• Timing. January is a difficult month to start anything fresh. We’ve already gained weight since Halloween and will continue to do so until Super Bowl Sunday. Not to mention that it’s cold and dark outside (at least in the United States), which makes us less active and even less inclined to change. After a holiday spending spree, money is frequently tighter in January. Stress levels are also higher.
• Lots of motivation but no solid plan. Those New Year’s Resolutions don’t come with a manual. “I’m going to lose 20 pounds this year,” we might easily remark, but that’s only the first step. To be more likely to succeed, you need a thorough strategy and frequently expert help to keep motivated.
• Setting unattainable ambitions. We frequently set unreasonable objectives, such as quitting smoking cold turkey or reducing 50 pounds in six months. We may set many objectives that have nothing in common (such as reducing weight and getting out of debt) and expect to complete them all at the same time. We had unrealistic expectations.
• Being too critical of ourselves. We have high hopes for ourselves, only to be disappointed when our development is slower than anticipated or we experience a setback. This might lead to you giving up.
• Inadequate support or responsibility. It’s difficult to keep motivated on your own. We’re sociable creatures. While we have support and are held accountable for our actions, we do better when attempting to achieve a goal. If no one knows you’re on a diet and fast food isn’t on your allowed menu, the only thing stopping you from the fast food lane is your own willpower.
You now understand why you fail to keep your New Year’s resolutions. To make resolutions effective, you must change your behaviour, establish realistic objectives, have a system in place to achieve the goal, and have people hold you responsible.
Instead, how Should You Approach Your Health Journey?
Now that you understand why you fail to keep your New Year’s resolutions, let’s look at how to tackle the path to improved health instead. It all starts with a plan.
• Boost your self-confidence. Begin with five-minute intervals. Instead of making a grandiose, ambiguous resolve, focus on one tiny, important action toward change that you can complete in five minutes. For instance, perhaps your aim is to eat healthier. Make a grocery list that contains more fruits and veggies in five minutes. Alternatively, make tiny changes to your daily diet by removing one sugary drink every day. Small tweaks keep you going toward your objective and help you get back on track when you get stuck.
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Maintain your motivation. Getting an accountability partner or mentor is one approach to do this. Another option is to make a vision board of what being healthy means to you. Include photos of yourself excelling and enjoying the life you desire.
• Aim for ten. Use the rule of ten, which basically means to accomplish anything for 10 minutes instead of 30, or to alter 10% instead of 100%. So, if you want to grow healthy by exercising, set a goal of doing 10 minutes of exercise every day. You may gradually increase your time, but getting started is the most difficult aspect. You are more likely to do something if you simply devote 10 minutes to it. The same may be true about eating healthy. Instead of drastically altering your diet, add extra fruits and vegetables or cut down 10% of your sugar intake every day (equivalent to 1 doughnut), progressively lowering until you’ve removed sugar from your diet.
• Make pre-decisions. Use what you wish to alter to piggyback on something you’re already doing. One approach to do this is to include one additional vegetable on your plate each day.
• Experiment with the proximity technique. This is useful if you want to include more exercise into your everyday routine. The key here is to have your footwear and workout gear near to your bed at all times. As a result, they’ll be the first things you see when you wake up.
• Make a list. Make a list and check off each job as you do it. This increases your motivation. Dopamine, or the incentive molecule, is generated anytime you “perform something life-enhancing, such as finishing a job,” according to Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog!—21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.
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Summary
You should approach the route to a healthy life in the same way that you would any other significant goal. Make lists, take tiny tasks at a time, and figure out how to remain motivated along the way.
We hope you enjoyed this first of three articles mini-series in making and meeting your goals. Be certain to check out the next two articles, whose links are found below.