New Year’s Day, a day for resolutions, often lightly made and soon forgotten. We even build in failure right from the very start. As in:

Have you made a New Year’s Resolution? Well, I’d like to lose weight but I’ve never managed it before.

(No surprises then, when it doesn’t work this time!)

 So why do so many of us make resolutions and then find it impossible to follow through? Why bother making them in the first place?

 Where does the idea of New Year’s resolutions come from? 

New Year’s Resolutions date back to the Babylonians, some 4000 years ago. The New Year was a time to return borrowed farm equipment and pay back debts; a time, therefore, to set things straight and start afresh.

Two thousand years or so later the ancient Romans re-established the tradition, giving gifts and making promises in honour of the deity Janus.  Janus was depicted as double-faced, allowing him to look back into the past and forward into the future. The Romans believed that making promises to Janus would bring good fortune in the year to come.

Why bother making resolutions today?

In my mind, the process of consciously choosing to do something and taking action in support of that puts me in the driving seat of my life.  All too often we drift along, letting others make decisions for us or believing that whatever happens is outside our control. To quote William Irwin Thomson, the poet and cultural historian:

If you do not create your destiny, you will have your fate inflicted upon you.

Being in the driving seat is empowering. It frees us from passivity and brings personal energy and focus.

So if you choose to make a New Year’s Resolution this year, how do you stick to it?

Here are my 7 steps to good resolutions:

1. Take time to make your resolution.

As Nancy Kline says:

The quality of everything human beings do depends on the thinking we do first.

Set some time aside and, like Janus, look back over the past year. What has worked for you? What hasn’t? What would you rather have? Then go forward in time and imagine yourself at the end of a successful 2012. What do you notice as you look back over the year? What changes have you made?

2.      Choose your words well.

Be precise about how you word your resolution. Run it through the following checks:

• is it stated in the positive?

e.g.  I want to drink healthily as opposed to I want to stop drinking so much  or  quit drinking

I want to weigh 10 stone rather than Iwant to lose weight

• avoid putting the problem into your resolution.

e.g. I want to stop eating chocolate. This is the don’t think of a pink elephant rule. If you tell yourself not to eat chocolate, guess what, you’ll spend all your time thinking about it! I want to eat healthily is going to move you towards your goal more effectively.

• is it specific and and measurable? How much will you weigh and by what date? When, how often and for how long will you go to the gym? When will you join that evening class? Will you be down to ten cigarettes a day by the end of January?

• Is this something you really want? Beware of goals that contain shoulds and oughts as these are clues that, on some level, you don’t really want this or you may be doing it to please another. If you are not 100% convinced, explore the reasons why or choose another goal.

3.        Is it realistic?

Do you have the resources needed to carry it out? As well as money, resources include things like time, support, energy. What impact will achieving your goal have on others?

4.        What’s in it for you?

This may seem an obvious question but we often choose a goal without fully exploring why we want it.

When we do, we may find we need to modify it, or it isn’t right for us after all or it’s something that someone else wants for us! For example, why do you want to lose weight? Because you want to run a half-marathon, be able to pay football with the kids, walk uphill without getting out of breath? All these reasons are far more powerful and motivating than because the doctor tells me to.  Find personal reasons that will genuinely motivate you.

5.     How will you know when you have achieved your goal?

What will your evidence be? What will you see/hear/feel? What will others notice?

This process is very important as its giving instructions to your unconscious mind.  Using your imagination to step into the time when you have achieved your goal is a powerful technique to prepare for success. 

6.      Plan for setbacks! 

You will inevitably stumble and fail on some occasions. This is the time when people often give up and say to themselves Well, I knew all along that I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Think through all the times when you know that sticking to your resolution is going to be hard. Plan how to deal with that. Know that you will crave that cigarette, want that biscuit, prefer  to stay warm indoors rather than go for a walk. How will you support yourself then?

7.     Practise personal forgiveness.

If you do “break” your resolution, view it as just a temporary setback and start again. After all, you are learning something new. Just think of the determination a young kid shows when they are first learning to ride a bike. The wobbles and crashes and scraped knees... and still they keep going! And that look of pure joy when they whizz off!

How useful did you find these 7 steps? Do you have any other tips for making and keeping resolutions?