Fifteen Powerful Tips to Make Your New Year Resolution Stick!

New Year Resolution

It is that time of the year when you are making New Year resolution. It may be that you want to exercise regularly, or give up smoking, or to eliminate a bad habit such as procrastination.

It is easy to identify a New Year Resolution but very difficult to make it stick. Most of the people will give up after a few days or few months You need a lot of motivation to keep your New Year Resolution stick.

However many people do not realize that taking action often leads to motivation rather than just waiting for motivation to show up for them.

Given below are few tips to make your New Year Resolution stick:

1. Start small
2. Determine what is success and what is a failure ( If you exercise daily it is a great success if you do not exercise even twice a week it is a failure)
3. Determine the point in your effort beyond which it is a failure ( Example: the minimum amount of exercise to name it as a success is three times a week)
4.  Do not try to be perfect.
5. Allow yourself permission for failure
6. Do not go on an all-or-nothing mode.
7. Reward yourself periodically for motivation
8. Plan your rewards-weekly, monthly, quarterly, and at the en of the year
9. Team up with others who are trying to get their New Year Resolution through.
10. Be kind to yourself
11.  Identify a person who will encourage you and also warn you.
12. Create a review mechanism
13. Determine the frequency of the review
14. Review with a friend
15. Take corrective actions

Try these powerful tips and very soon you will be celebrating and feeling good because your motivation will stay with you through out the year.

Your New Year Resolution will be so successful that others will come to you for help.

Are you caught in the motivation trap?

Since New Year, I have been challenging this motivation belief in me.

Let me explain the belief:

" I believe that I need to be motivated to do any task. Motivation should come first and then my action."

This is such a limiting belief. I picked this belief from many of the self-help books I have read, from management theories regarding motivation, from my bosses, teachers--- I can keep listing the source of this belief, it is a long one.

This belief was responsible for the internal dialogue in me that prevented me taking important actions when it was required.

Some examples:

I don't feel like exercising

Preparing and submitting the expense statement is so boring

I don't feel like resolving the conflict I had with my colleague

I don't feel like organizing my house

I have started substituting my internal dialogue, by being aware of it and changing it.

Hence, "I don't feel like exercising." was substituted with "Let me begin exercising to feel motivated about it."

It worked remarkably. I exercised everyday since the New Year Resolution and have lost 6 KGs (13.22 pounds).

Here are few more examples of substitution:

Let me begin to prepare and submit the expense statement to drive away boredom and get interested in the activity

Let me begin the first step to resolve the conflict to feel motivated about solving it.

Let me begin organizing the house to get into the feel of the activity and get motivated.

An action has its impact on our perception about it. Though it may not be possible to feel high about every action, we can, however, definitly generate enough feeling, interest and excitement to carry it through.

Try it out! Challenge this limiting belief of motivation! You will get a lot of things done.

The key is to identify the first few steps and begin the task. Your interest and feeling will suddenly appear and follow you through.

Do write your comments after you have tried it out.