Creating STICKY New Year’s resolutions

You started the New Year with good intentions, you made some great resolutions, it's Jan 3rd and it’s looking a little harder than you thought. You hear yourself saying - exercise is overrated, I’ll stop again next week, it’s only one chocolate, I will meditate tomorrow instead! That voice inside your head is tempting and so convincing that it could have spent time at a top-tier negotiation school. How do you create New Year’s resolutions and habits that you will stick with?

Last year was the first year I had some success at sticking to mine. Here are a few strategies and tactics that I used which I found the most helpful

I started with the following resolutions (I eventually tweaked these to make them sticky – see below)

• I will drink more water

• I will exercise 5 days a week

• I will meditate every day

• I will keep a daily gratitude journal (I started this one a couple of years back, but I was lapsing quite often)

Strategies and Tactics for creating Sticky goals

1. Good Goal setting (SMART)

Sometimes we get carried away making new resolutions or feel pressure on the 31st. My recommendation is to start early, so start thinking about it now and maybe even tweak your goals in January as you think about the practicality and how you will manage it and plan it into your lifestyle. This will help you have a fighting chance. Instead of, I will be healthy/ I will stop smoking/read more/less insta/TikTok, try to be specific and create SMART Goals. This does make your goal longer but it’s worth the extra thought I promise!

• Specific - how you will reach your goal.

• Measurable - checkpoints which help you to quantify you have completed a specific step.

• Achievable - steps in the plan you are constructing.

• Reasonable - expectations that what you are saying you are going to be able to do can be done at the current time.

• Time - specific date and time when you will complete each step in the process.

You could even include what is an acceptable minimum, ideal scenario, and middle ground if you wanted to be more granular, so for example:

• I will meditate every day became

• I will meditate first thing in the morning five times a week for 10 mins minimum. If I have more time, I will do 20min. On days when I am running late, I will breathe deeply 10 times instead. For the first 30 days, I will check this off on my habit tracker

2. Missing isn’t a failure

Missing a day or so isn’t a failure and doesn’t mean you have to stop. This one is the trickiest of them all to manage. You may feel might as well just stop altogether. We can instead be kinder to ourselves and just get back on the horse, move away from perfection and keep going the best we can that week or even that month. This one kept me on track the most. If I missed a day, I would just do it the next day. Yes, I missed some days but the next week I pushed myself to get back on track.

3. The Vision/The detailed Why

Think about why you are doing this. For some of my coaching clients, we go through the model below, it’s called a pain/gain chart or simply what’s the impact of doing or not doing something. It’s a nice tool to get you back on track in case you are lapsing or, better still, you can do this before you set your SMART goals. I also recommend digging deep on the why and why not – you need to remember your motivation behind something if you are to truly succeed

For me my pain/gain around meditation and walking, while being partly about wanting a healthier life and mindset, was also linked to my menopause. I needed something to help me manage symptoms in terms of mood and weight gain: by digging deeper into the pain and the gain it helped me stick with this habit. Without the walking and meditation, I knew I was moodier, which created tension in the house, I had pain sometimes, I didn’t feel so happy and sometimes had brain fog and then felt lethargic, my clothes felt a little tighter, I ate more sugar, I wasn’t kind to myself etc.

4. Find an accountability Partner

This might be easier said than done. One of the reasons I am sure I got close to most of the goals, was having a friend who also wanted to walk/exercise. We have a recurring meeting on the agenda on Mondays and Thursdays. . A coach can help here too, maybe not walk with you, but having a regular check-in and somebody who motivates you to continue can certainly help. They will also help you get back on the horse if you fall off (without any judgment) and help you understand the root cause of why you are struggling with this resolution (it’s usually not lack of time).

• My goal changed to - I will walk or exercise three times a week (Monday, Thursday mornings and once in the weekend, twice with a friend and once on my own) -> Accountability and planned in my agenda a recurring event

5. Planning is everything

Plan time for your resolutions, when you will do them, what might need to change to make it easier, and add them into your agenda as recurring meetings. I also had a piece of paper where I check marked having done the activity. I just created a simple habit tracker. I liked the feeling of the check mark (seeing this visually) and it added to my motivation, so I stuck with it. I suggest doing this digitally, or on paper, for at least 30 days: it takes about 30 days to create a habit and 66 days to make it automatic. Remind yourself why you are doing these things: review your pain gain chart and tweak any items that are not working by looking at ideal and minimum options.

6. Habit stacking

One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day, and then stack your new behavior on top.

• My drinking (more) water habit was adapted to – I will drink 500ml of water when my alarm goes off and I wake up. I do this before anything else, including looking at my phone. Every night while brushing my teeth I fill my water bottle with water and place it by my bed.

• Gratitude journaling became – Before turning off the light I will write 3 things I am grateful for in my journal four days a week

My resolutions became STICKY essentially SMART, STACKABLE, PLANNED and LINKED TO MY WHY! In 2023, I will keep the ones I started and add doing minimum of 15 mins practicing Dutch speaking 3 times a week– this one is a tough one for me, so I’m going to have to make it extra sticky

Would love to know your resolutions and how you are planning to keep going.

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