The holiday season is steeped in tradition. Many of those traditions are rooted in celebrants’ faith, but one of the last customs people embrace each year is largely secular.
The tradition of making New Year’s resolutions is older than many people may realize. According to History.com, the ancient Babylonians are believed to be the first people to make New Year’s resolutions when they began doing so roughly 4,000 years ago during a 12-day festival known as Akitu. That festival was religious in nature, but many people now make resolutions with a goal toward self-improvement unrelated to their faith. As people ponder their resolutions for the year ahead, the following strategies might help them stay the course over the next 12 months. Give serious thought to a prospective resolution. Statistics regarding New Year’s resolutions vary, but a 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center found that 13 percent of adults polled indicated they kept none of their resolutions. Numerous variables can affect whether or not a person keeps a resolution, but giving a potential resolution little thought ahead of time can make achieving a goal unlikely. Give any potential change ample thought before committing to a resolution. If you aspire to lose weight, identify the ways you’re going to go about that. Perhaps you can find a local gym to join, identify ways to eat a more nutritious diet and, perhaps most importantly, study how you can make time to stay the course. A little legwork in advance of declaring a resolution can pay off in the long run. Set periodic goals. Setting small goals along the way to the larger goal can serve as motivation to keep going. If you aspire to watch less television and read more, resolve to read 100 pages per week and then gradually increase that total if you so desire. Small goals can provide a great means to measure incremental progress that will ultimately make achieving a larger goal more likely. Be realistic. Realistic goals are more likely to be achieved than ones that seem good on the surface but are too difficult to keep. For example, if you aspire to exercise for an hour each day but obligations to work and family leave little time for physical activity. You may need to edit those expectations in favor of a more realistic, achievable goal. Taking on too much will only discourage you when hurdles inevitably appear, and that is likely to compel you to abandon the resolution entirely. If your initial goal is realistic, then any challenges that arise are less likely to derail your efforts. Don’t go it alone. Many people employ the buddy system as a means to stay motivated with fitness-related resolutions, and that approach can be applied to any goal you set at the beginning of the year. Having someone there to hold you accountable, and doing the same for a partner, increases the chances you’ll stay the course.
New Year’s resolutions are an ancient tradition, although the majority tend to be abandoned relatively quickly. But anyone can buck that trend and stay the course by employing a few simple yet effective strategies.