How to keep your 2018 New Year’s resolutions: experts’ tips on ways to avoid failure
From breaking your goals down into smaller achievable steps to being aware of what you can do and being honest about your personal limitations, we have you covered when it comes to sticking to your promises
When it comes to making New Year’s resolutions, Cherry Ng likes to keep things simple.
First, the 30-year-old looks over all the goals she wants to accomplish in the coming year. Then she selects just three to commit to.
Finally, she takes specific steps every month to help her achieve her main goal. So, for instance, if her fitness resolution is to run a marathon later in the year, she’ll commit to training three times a week in January, four times a week in February, and so on.
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“Breaking my goals down into smaller, more doable steps, and creating a specific time frame around them is practical. Plus it makes achieving the main goal less daunting,” says Ng. Thanks to this strategy, the Hong Kong-based development associate always manages to see her New Year’s resolutions through.
Not many can say the same. In fact, whether we have a solid strategy for achieving them or not, many of us just don’t bother with resolutions, or we’ll make them and abandon them just days or weeks later. Why do we not hold fast to our well-intentioned plans?
“One of the reasons we find it so hard to keep our resolutions is because fear is often what drives us to make them,” says Dr Cathy Tsang-Feign, a clinical psychologist who practises in Central in Hong Kong. “For example, we might tell ourselves, ‘I have to lose weight next year, otherwise my partner won’t find me attractive any more and leave me’.
