With the next year approaching, we are again facing the time of the year in which we make many resolutions to ourselves. Unfortunately, most people remain confused and unsure as to what they are willing and able to change in their life, while those who get through the first stage end up giving up a couple of weeks after. This article lists some simple steps to figuring out what you need to change in your life, what’s important, and how you should stick to your goal of achieving your new year’s resolution.
The First Step To Making New Year's Resolution
i) Identifying the problem
The first step, a person should take, is identifying and accepting the problematic aspects of their life and the environment around them. Societal norms make people more stubborn and unwilling to accept that they may have faults in their personalities or lifestyle. Accepting that no human is perfect and that you may have faults, is the first step that everyone must take in the long journey to having a pleasant and fulfilling life.
ii) Identifying its root cause
Once the “problem” has been identified, you must sit and establish a link between the problem and what is causing it.
When you have identified the trigger, you must base your resolution on how to terminate that trigger, thus stopping the problem as well.
iii) A few examples of the new year's resolution
- A common resolution that people make is regarding their obesity problems. A practical implementation of the steps stated above could be to identify whether you have an obesity problem or not. This could be done by calculating your body mass index, which tells you what stage your body is on and whether your fretting is justified or not. In the case that it is not, you must establish what is making you feel this way and how you can eliminate that trigger.
- If it is your friends or family that are making you feel distraught, then your new year’s resolution should be based on how to develop enough courage to stop people from making you feel inferior about yourself.
- If social media is the reason since it presents a fake image to you, then you need to limit its use and be self-satisfied. Not letting the media brainwash you into becoming something else and establishing self-confidence is a perfect way to start the new year.
How to Keep Going Strong?
Once you’ve decided what your new year resolution is, you must take certain steps to ensure that you are working on bringing that change to your life. A few steps could be:
- Monthly reminders to yourself
- Slow and Steady wins the race
- Be SMART
- Join Focus Groups
i) Monthly Reminders:
We humans often procrastinate a great deal and end up losing focus on the bigger picture due to the hecticness of our daily lives. One way to stay strong in your resolutions is to constantly remind yourself of them, with motivation and zeal. When preparing your resolution, write it down in big letters on chart paper and decorate it as per your liking. Hang it up underneath your clock so that every time you wake up, or generally look at the clock, you would get a beautiful reminder of what the main goal of your life is today.
Each month, choose a specific day when you’re free, and on that day, take down the chart you made and replace it with a new one, also made by you. This way, each month, you are giving yourself a good recollection of what you are supposed to be doing, with a fun arts-and-craft twist.
ii) Slow and Steady Wins the Race:
A famous acronym used by managers in the corporate world, when making their business objectives (similar to new year’s resolutions), is SMART(specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
Normal individuals can also use SMART to make sure that their new year’s resolutions are appropriate and not overwhelming. Often, throughout the year, our situation and priorities change, and thus, we may need to adjust our resolutions to still accomplish them.
SMART can be beneficially used to make a suitable long-term aim, that is within our boundaries to accomplish. We can also cross-examine our resolution with SMART to make sure that we are choosing a befitting objective in our life.
iii) Focus Groups:
Due to technological innovations, we can easily connect to the other millions of people around the globe. We can find new friends and develop cross-cultural tolerance through increased globalisation and advancement in Information Technology and Communication (IT&C).
By using these devices correctly, we can find focus groups and communities of people that are going through the same thing as you. By communicating your progress, your fears, and your hopes to other people that you connect with, you can easily develop confidence and motivation to go forward with your resolution, knowing that you are not alone in this.
Seeing other people’s progress is also a beneficial reminder of how we need to bring good changes in our life as well.
An Important Conclusion
Now that we have noted ways to make a new year’s resolution, and how to keep them going strong throughout the year, we also need to address another important point. Making new year resolutions is wonderful if we intend to use this time as a starting point for bringing a healthy change to our life, that we can measure and compare over a year.
If we intend to make a new year’s resolution because it’s considered cool or because everyone else is doing it, then that is harmful and detrimental to us. One, because we are conforming to others’ standards, and two, because we will not take it seriously or spend enough time or effort to make a plausible long-term goal and implement it in our life.
Instead of wasting time being wooed over by money-wasting fireworks or other unimportant, frivolous celebrations, we should spend this time reflecting and pondering over our life and judging what changes we should bring in ourselves and our environment to achieve our long-term goals. This will make us responsible and mature adults who can steer our life in a better direction.
