Top Tips For Making A Good New Year's Resolution

Hello everyone, it’s Matt here. Happy New Year!

A new year is upon us, and so I thought I’d start off this new period of time by going back to Stridi basics with an advice piece.

We’ve all seen the classic “New Year, new me!” posts on social media in the last few weeks, so in this blog I’m going to focus on the art of making a good New Year’s Resolution. 

The first thing I want to say about New Year Resolutions is that…. It’s important to keep them realistic. Why am I saying this? Because we’re all guilty of deciding to take up some new habits and then not sticking to them. 

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So I’m going to show you a way of carrying out your shiny new resolutions. 

 

You may have come across “SMART” Goals – be it in education, at work or from a therapist. But what are SMART Goals? Well, it stands for:

Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Time.

Let’s use an example. Let’s say….. you want to exercise more this year.

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Specific: this one is where you tailor the objective to your own needs. 

 

Do you want to end up running a marathon this year or do you simply want to be able to walk around the block a few times? If the former, you might want to look into joining a running club. There are plenty around and they are always on the lookout for new members. 

 

However, If you just want to go for a stroll once a week, then that’s great. It can start with something as simple as walking to your friend’s house.

Measurable: how will you know when you have achieved your goal? To continue with the exercise example, you can buy a GPS watch to time your runs and monitor your progress. 

If you’re walking to your friend’s house a couple of days a week, then you might want to keep a diary of how each walk felt, and how you were feeling afterwards. 

When you start to exercise, it might be difficult at first while your body adapts to the change in routine, but once you’ve been out a few times, you will start to feel the endorphins (the happy feeling after exercise) sooner and it will help you look forward to the exercise.

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Achievable: this is where you have to decide what you are capable of. 

 

If exercise hasn’t always been your thing, then competing in the Olympics might be a bit of a stretch! But that doesn’t mean you can’t gain significant personal progress. What I mean by this, is that once you’ve walked to your pal’s house a few times, you might get the urge to become a bit more adventurous. 

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My old uni mentor taught me about the “lamp post” technique, whereby you head towards the nearest lamp post, and once you get there, you look for the next one along and walk towards that one. 

 

I’m the kind of person who finds it difficult to leave the house unless I’ve got a specific reason, i.e. I need something from the shop. 

 

So I decided to implement this technique on the way back from the shops. I’d get towards the turning to my house, and then keep walking down the road towards the nearest lamp post. 

 

You don’t have to use lamp posts or streetlights, you can use anything – such as hedges or even benches. 

Realistic: this one is very similar to the last one. So, to avoid rambling on about lamp posts and walking again, I’ll go down a different route. 

 

Be realistic about your targets. Your new year resolutions can be anything you want, and it certainly doesn’t have to be exercise. 

 

Maybe you want to eat healthier or become better at meeting deadlines? If you’ve got a sweet tooth then you might find it too difficult to completely cut out KitKats, or whatever your favourite sweet is. 

 

It will be much easier to keep it simple. As an example, you could try having some vegetable soup once a week. There are loads of different varieties of soup that you can buy from the shops, and they only take a few minutes to heat. 

If you’re trying to get better at meeting deadlines, you can start by doing something simple such as having a chat with your lecturer, teacher or boss, whichever is applicable to you – by email, if you prefer. Discuss your ambitions with them, and the direction you wish to go in.

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Time: To continue the wonderful topic of deadlines, you can make a deadline to track your progress with whatever your new habits might be. These deadlines are flexible! 

 

But be true to yourself with this one. Think about how much you want to achieve these new lifestyle habits and how long it might take you to make some progress with it.

As an example, you can compare your walking times from your very first walk, with the walk you take exactly a month after you started. 

 

So if you want to cut the walk to your friend’s house down from 15 minutes to, say, 12 minutes, you can see how close you are to the 12 minute mark after a month.

If you simply wanted to eat healthier, you can keep a food diary to record what you’ve eaten and how you have felt afterwards. You can observe this progress over the whole month, or however long you set the deadline for. Do you have more energy? Are you sleeping better? 

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And if you have trouble sticking to your new lifestyle at first, keep trying! Practice makes perfect. 

As always, let us know how you get on. If you’ve got any stories to share or tips that you think others would benefit from, then give us a shout over on our social media channels.

Matt

 

(nb: this article was first published January 2020)

 

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