The Secret to Achieving Your New Year's Resolutions

Summary: Do you make New Year's resolutions every year - vow to lose weight, eat less junk food, read more books, work more efficient - only to feel frustrated and give up your resolution just several weeks later?

For many people, making New Year’s resolutions is kind of ritual to welcome the coming year. No matter what resolution you commit to, the ultimate goal is to live a better life. However, is this really helpful? Actually not.

The truth is, people often resolve to make huge changes at the beginning of the year but most of them fail. Why? Most of the time, we just take it for grant that the arrival of a new year will magically change our life in a positive way as we expected. It’s exciting to imagine how perfect the coming year would be, and you can’t help making a long list of “to-dos”. However, this list will easily be overwhelming and you will end up frustrated. So it’s no wonder there are always quite a few grumblers in the end of a year, for they have done nothing for their resolutions.

Are New Year resolutions really that difficult to pull off? Not exactly so. There’s one secret that enables you to totally change the resolution game - determination. I think everyone is familiar to this word, but some of you may consider this word as no more than a platitude. Like most secrets worth knowing, this one comes with a price. Therefore, we have laid out tips you can take to make your new year’s resolution stick.

1. Start small.

Set challenging resolutions, as well as manageable, for overly aggressive goals will drain your confidence when they are not accomplished. For example, if you want to keep fit, then you can’t count on losing 10 pounds in a week. Let’s say 1 pound, that’s more practical.

2. Be patient.

Everything takes time. It’s really no need to put unnecessary pressure on yourself, and feel bad about it once you fail to do it. Even if you fail, try it again.

3. Ask for support.

If you find it hard to achieve the goal alone, try to share it with friends or family and ask them for advice. And you can even ask them to supervise you and keep track of your progress.

Though the New Year has already passed, but it’s never too late to make resolutions. Why did ringing in the New Year become such a big deal? Change is a long term process underling in every single day, rather than a specific day. The essential of resolution is never about start but persistence. As long as you take action with determination, you’ve already made a difference.

Now the problem is how can we always keep the motivation? I just figure out one. In the first place, I want to ask a question: Who is the one that you spend the most time with? Friend? Family? If I say mobile phone, you may not deny it. Smart devices affect our everyday life in a rather deeper way than we realize. For a long time, I choose compelling photos with motivational quotes and set them as wallpaper for home screen. Then every time when I use the smartphone, I can see the motivational saying and remember what I pursue for in life. Mostly, I DIY the mobile wallpapers using AmoLink, which is a powerful photo editor. The advantage is you can personalize the wallpaper to your liking, and add the quote that inspires you the most to the image. Therefore, the wallpaper can be a nice reminder - don’t let procrastination make your new year look more like last year.

In the end, I’d like to quote a fair description of resolution, “Resolutions require almost no work upfront, but they require incredible willpower to achieve...and apparently less than 10% of us have that much willpower. So making resolutions is really just an easy way to get a 90% guarantee of feeling guilty in the future.” So now, are you ready to be the less than 10% of the achievers?