What To Do When Your New Year’s Resolutions Stall Out: A Guide to Sustainable Personal Growth
While we all have goals that motivate us throughout the year, the start of the year especially feels like a time where we have the most goals or expectations for ourselves. Maybe this is because we have a brand new year in front of us, or because everyone else seems to be doing it…However, regardless of the reason, we have all found ourselves at some point thinking through what the next 365 days ahead of us should be filled with.
The challenge we are faced with is that most of these resolutions don’t last.. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shock to you. Research and surveys have found that by the end of January, around 58% of resolutions had been abandoned. To go even further, at the end of that calendar year only around 8% of people agreed that they had met their resolution for the year. There are many reasons we could argue this happens, and using my therapist lens I’m going to assume some of the biggest reasons they are abandoned is that we are expecting too much of ourselves too quickly and/or not listening to ourselves in the process and finding it more challenging to break our once normal routine than maybe we were expecting (or hoping). So…we’re left with the question of how do we make this year different? How do we recognize the challenge and simultaneously bypass those challenges in order to be the 8% at the end of the year? Here are a few things to start with:
Forgive yourself when things don’t go to plan
Carrying anger, disappointment, guilt, frustration or even shame for ourselves is one of the most challenging things to do. So when our resolutions feel like they fell off and we start to feel these emotions towards ourselves, it makes sense that we are no longer interested in participating in something that has the potential of leaving us with these feelings again. Although challenging to do, change won’t come from ourselves until we make room for self-compassion. Remember, you cannot bully yourself into a better version of yourself.
Recognize and be okay that some of these things aren’t working & re-evaluate
A part of forgiving yourself will be acknowledging that it’s okay some of these plans didn’t work out. Solution-focused therapists believe that everything is information, even the things that aren’t happening. With this, we are able to transition to a place of curiosity over why things aren’t happening, rather than leaning into frustration or judgment. After being curious about why things feel hard to keep consistent, we can recognize that it’s just that. Just because things are hard to keep consistent, does not mean they are unattainable, we just need to re-evaluate the route we are taking to get there.
Baby steps.. No, even smaller baby steps
Creating big goals isn’t necessarily a bad thing, actually one could argue the opposite. However, when we set goals that are too big, we can actually then be working against ourselves. Let’s say your goal is to go to the gym more this year, but because this is new for you, you find it hard to wake up early enough in the morning to get to the gym. With this in mind, maybe your baby step goal needs to be waking up earlier. We can break this down into little steps. Maybe step one is setting your clothes out the night before, and then your next goal is to put your feet on the floor when the alarm goes off, and then getting dressed, and then walking to your car, etc. The bigger the expectations we have of ourselves, the bigger the disappointment it can be when we don’t achieve that.
However, we can recognize that the more frequently you set your clothes out the night before, and the more often you have the goal of putting your feet on the floor when the alarm goes off, the easier that will be… and, all of those things are elements towards the pursuit of your bigger goal.
Celebrate through the process
It becomes easier to reach bigger goals, if we recognize even the smallest steps it took to get there. Also, small things over a long period of time, become big things. You are constantly evolving into a new version of yourself, so I don’t think it would hurt to be your own teammate through that journey and celebrate your transformation along the way. Remember, most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten.
I hope these are things that you can continue to come back to, not only this year, but years in the future as you are meeting a new version of yourself constantly. As you are aiming for sustainable personal growth remember the words: forgiveness, curiosity, reevaluation, intentionality and celebration. These are words that I believe not only will assist towards the goals that you have set for yourself, but will also help soften the expectations to be a completely new version of yourself. Remember, setting goals is not a bad thing, but who you are today is also not a bad thing.