Top Most Common New Year’s Resolutions (and How to Follow Through on Them)

Every year, literally thousands and millions of people make New Year’s resolutions, hoping to spark positive change. The repeating themes each year include a more active approach to health and fitness, and improved finances, and learning new things for more personal and professional development. Chances are, more than a couple of the top 10 of the most common resolutions will look familiar to you:

1. Exercise more
2. Lose weight
3. Get organized
4. Learn a new skill or hobby
5. Live life to the fullest
6. Saving more money / spend less money
7. Quit smoking
8. Spending more time with family and friends
9. Travel more
10. Read more

Making your New Year’s resolutions happen

Despite having the best of intentions, once the glow of a fresh new year wears off, many people often struggle to make good on their plans. According to a study published in the Journal of the Clinical Psychology, only 46% of people who has made New Year’s resolutions were successful. That means over half of the people who set the goal for the new year will fail!

The study also involved the non-resolvers, people who did not make a New Year’s resolution, but had the goal they wanted to achieve that year. Only 4% of non-resolvers were successful at being achieving their goals, a far bleaker result than those who did make the New Year’s resolution.

Naturally, we don’t want to be in the camp of folks that will fail to achieve their aspirations and dreams for 2021, so we have put together an exhaustive plan for following through on your resolution.

If you really want to realize your New Year’s resolution this year, follow these 10 steps:

1. Mentally prepare for change

Changing ingrained habits is not a easy task, so before diving head-first into your New Year goals, it is very important to take a step back and get ready for that impending change.

The first breakthrough in the change is taking a personal inventory. Being that it is the end of one year and the beginning of the next; it is very perfect timing so as to take stock in the past year’s accomplishments. Think about the following:

1. What did I set out to do in the previous year?
2. Where did I can make progress?
3. Where didn’t I  see progress?

Naturally, your resolution may focus on areas that lack progress, but don’t forget to savor the progress being made, and find some small way to celebrate. Those happy feelings are very useful! If possible, try to associate them with an object or word which is related to your accomplishment.

You will eagerly want to keep upbeat with your new resolution, so you can use that positive association with previous year’s accomplishments to remind you of those good feelings when you are feeling challenged.

As you start thinking about the changes you want to implement, make sure to do the following:

• Stay positive
• Try not to make big/quick changes
• Change should be gradual
• Build on smaller changes
• Allow a little room for error

2. Set a goal that motivates you

You would be surprised how often people set goals that are not for themselves. These goals could be dictated or coerced by a manager, spouse, or parental / peer pressure.

While it’s nice to have some external support, if you don’t share the same passion, the resolution has a small chance of succeeding and could even be dead on arrival.

To do this, you need to make sure the goal you set is important to you and only you and that there is value or benefit for you in achieving the goal. It is these two things that will provide the reason and willingness to take action. This is also known as motivation!

Thus, it’s a safe bet if your resolutions align with the following:

• Your goals
• Your priorities
• Your dreams
• Your aspirations

Not only should you align around your inner-most desires, but you should also make sure the resolutions align around your top priorities. This will lead to a “must do” attitude.

If your goals are career-centric, like improving your Excel skills, creating your own professional development plan is a great way to stay motivated on the path towards your goal.

3. Limit resolutions to a manageable amount

The common mistake in the process of resolution setting is having too many and spreading yourself too thin. We all want to learn 30 different languages, 20 new job skills, and eliminate 10 bad habits, but we are not superheroes, are we? 😉 We only have so much focus and concentration span we can dedicate to self-improvement, so having too many resolutions is a great way not to achieve the goals you have set out for yourself.

Ergo, you should make a short list of resolutions that you can actually manage in the upcoming year. Knowing that short list of priorities is the hardest part of all. Choose the points that need to be focused on at urgency or are important. The key here is comprehending how to prioritize your goals.

Here is an exercise that you can undertake to help you figure out and understand what is the most important in your life. All you need is a paper-pad, a pen, and a wall.

1. Write anything that you want to accomplish for the self-improvement purposes on a post-it
2. Each post-it only gets one discreet tactic
3. Place each and every post-it on the wall
4. Go crazy – use as many post-its as is possible for you
5. Group together the similar post-its
6. Place the topics you feel strongly about at the very top of the wall
7. Put the topics you feel “meh” about on the bottom portion
8. Spend a lot of time thinking about the order of the first 4-5 post-it (groups)

As you might guess, #8 is the most time-consuming, because it will determine what your resolutions are that you are going to take on this year.

The final piece of the puzzle here is knowing your shortcomings and limitations and your personal bandwidth. With that being said, you should focus on your top priorities while you are balancing how much attention you can truly devote to a resolution.

Final thought: It’s better to tackle one resolution at a time well than keeping and maintaining multiple resolutions poorly.

Learn new skills in the year 2022

We hope these steps help and enable you follow through with your resolutions and make 2022 your best year yet. If you are still looking for resolution ideas, feel free to reach out to us. If your resolution is to learn a new skill or to advance your career, start achieving your goals today with the help of focus and internet! All the best for the upcoming year! May this new year be a chance for you to achieve all the heights that you aspire and desire!

Thank you for reading this blog!