How to prepare yourself psychologically for your New Year’s resolutions.

Tips on how to psychologically prepare yourself for the challenge of achieving your New Year's resolutions.

The year 2022 will soon begin and with its start many people will be anxious to make their own lists of New Year's resolutions. It is normal that, taking advantage of the change of digits, human beings try to redirect the course of our lives.

However, it usually happens that many of those resolutions that we are so excited to fulfill in the end do not materialize in anything, something that can cause us a lot of anxiety.

In order to make them happen, we are going to see how to approach New Year's resolutions, how to make them in the best way.how to raise them in the best way to fulfill them.

The importance of preparing for new year's resolutions.

As every year, the beginning of a new one is perceived as that ideal moment of change, as the potential beginning of a new stage. Nature does not notice it, but the human species does, both collectively and individually. As individuals, we want the next 365 days to be synonymous with a new "me", and January 1st is the day when we try to convince ourselves that this year will be different.

On many occasions we fail to achieve the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of a new year. What goes wrong?

In order to fulfill our New Year's resolutions, we must first know how to make them.. The simple part of the list of what we want to accomplish is to write them down on paper, because thinking them through is another matter. Many mistakes are made when making New Year's resolutions and, for this reason, almost 50% of the people who had proposed things to do during the new year admit by the end of January that they have not fulfilled them. Barely 10% have achieved them by the end of the year.

Fortunately, this coming year can be different if we follow the recommendations below. There is no guarantee that we will accomplish 100% of everything we set out to do, but if we know what to set out to do and maintain an optimistic outlook and self-confidence, the results will undoubtedly be positive in the long run.

Keys to set New Year's resolutions

In order to approach New Year's resolutions in the most effective way possible, here we bring a series of key points to consider when making them, because the way in which we prepare ourselves psychologically when approaching these resolutions will make a difference. As we suggested, it is not a matter of simply writing down desires and wanting to fulfill them.. No, you have to be a little more specific, more concrete and, very importantly, make sure that you start following them as of January 1st.

1. Establish priorities

The first thing to do is make a list of objectives that we would like to achieve and then order them from most important to least important.. It is essential to establish priorities and assign a degree of importance to focus more on those that we believe will be more profitable. As a guide, we can follow the following criteria:

• The degree to which we would like to achieve that.
• The time required to achieve it.
• The necessary effort to invest.

It is essential to be as specific and concrete as possible. Aiming to "eat better" is not a concrete resolution. What is eating better? Are we talking about eating healthy, low-fat, banning hamburgers? It is better to make it more specific, for example, "every day I will eat two pieces of fruit" or "I will only eat pastries on the weekend".

2. Make a minimalist list

As the saying goes: He who grasps too much, grasps too little. Even if we have followed the previous advice very well, just because we have 20 very concrete and very specific New Year's resolutions does not mean that we are going to keep them. Having too many things to accomplish, no matter how specific they are, is also a daunting task..

Once we have ordered our goals according to their degree of importance, it is time to set a limit. The first three on the list should become those that we will try to accomplish, while the rest will remain as resolutions to be started only if we see that we manage those three priorities well. If we succeed, we can expand the list to see if we continue to be as consistent.

The best option is to make a minimalist list, with less than 10 resolutions and highlighting at most the first 5.

3. Divide the objectives into sub-objectives

The best way to notice progress is to break down the goals into smaller goals, which are easier to achieve with less effort and more concrete than the overall goal. By breaking down medium- and long-term objectives into simpler, easier-to-achieve simpler sub-goals that are easy to achieve in the short term, will help us to be clear about what to do in the short term.will help us to be clear about what to do.

For example, the goal of losing 20 kilos is concrete, yes, but it is not achievable in the short term. If we want to achieve this goal we must first lose some weight, such as half a kilo. What we can do is to consider a scale of different weights that we will mark as a subobjective fulfilled as we achieve it. The first half kilo lost is a first step to achieve the big goal of losing 20 kilos.

In addition, as small goals are easy to achieve, they will become small successes that will keep us motivated and, as we achieve more goals, the more motivated we will be to see the long road we have already traveled. It is essential to avoid leaving everything set in abstract goals without deadlines..

And very important: measure the progress. It is highly advisable that in addition to subdividing these goals, we write down each small step we take, either in a diary, a calendar or any other support. What is not measured cannot be improved.

4. Make yourself a schedule

It is essential to establish a new schedule prepared from day one, and stick to it naturally. Before starting to introduce these new habits in our day to day, we must do what is necessary to to be able to do these new tasks in a constant and consistent manner.. The more detailed and concrete our schedule is, the better.

5. Look for accomplices

A good way to make sure we stick to our resolutions is to look for accomplices. For example, if we have decided to get in shape, a good idea is to join the gym with a friend who has made the same resolution, so that we can put pressure on each other to achieve it.

Also it is a good idea to tell family and friends we trust what our annual goals are.. If they are people who want us to succeed, they will be interested in our progress and, from time to time, will ask us how we are doing, acting as spontaneous reminders that we should be accomplishing what we set out to do at the beginning of the year. The psychological factor of fear of disappointing the people we care about plays an important role.

6. Anticipate your own excuses

Anticipate the possible excuses that appear in your mind.. Analyze what you do in your daily life and identify behaviors that can become an excuse to stop making an effort and abandon what you had proposed the end of the previous year.

An example: if you had set out to get in shape, don't spend weeks looking for the best or cheapest gym. Go for the closest and most affordable one, to avoid using the excuse "it's too far away" and, if its price is relatively high, use that as a reason to go as many times as possible.

7. Take care of yourself

At first glance it may seem that the advice to sleep well and stay fit has little to do with how to approach New Year's resolutions. Not to resort to clichés and clichéd phrases, but it is worth remembering that "a healthy mind in a healthy body".

Physical well-being influences psychological well-being, and therefore also in a negative sense.. Physical fatigue and tiredness are detrimental to our cognitive and motivational aspects, making us less willing to do anything and making it harder to concentrate.

8. If you need it, seek professional help

It is not necessary to suffer a psychopathology to see a psychologist.In therapy it is also possible to develop emotion management skills that are very useful to achieve our personal and professional goals. Or if you prefer, you can opt for the coaching services that many psychologists offer.