How to Stick to Your New Year's Goals

Happy New Year and welcome (back) to all our new and returning students! We hope you all had some wonderful and restful holidays, but now it’s time to get back to work, and that’s usually a difficult thing at this time of year. It can help to set some new or reaffirmed goals right from the start to help you get back into some healthy habits and productive routines.

We can call these goals New Year’s Resolutions if we want to make them sound festive and inspirational, though the term might cause an eye roll and a certain amount of PTSD. Few of us have probably had much success with past New Year’s resolutions, as they tend to peter out within the first weeks, days, or even hours of the New Year - no wonder so many of us don’t take them seriously! It turns out we were approaching things all wrong. So let’s talk about how to do things the right way and make your goals and resolutions stick.

First of all, don’t have too many resolutions. Stick to a few main goals which you can use as a base to build on for the rest of the year. Want to compete in a marathon or just be more active? Start by going for a short walk or run every day. Trying to beat your anger management issues, improve your attention span, or want to stop smoking or drinking? Start by meditating even for just one minute a day, but every single day. Do you see what I’m getting at here? An easy way to start and maintain any habit is to do it every day – even just for a single minute. But you have to do it every, single, day.

And that’s all there is to it. It might not sound overly inspirational, but that’s really all you need to get started. One minute every day. The hard part is actually sitting down (or getting up) to do the thing, because it sounds like a pain when you tell yourself you have to meditate, or write, or do something arty, or exercise, for who knows how long. But doesn’t it sound easy when you tell yourself you have to sit down and write for only a minute? Or meditate for a minute? Or even go outside, walk for a minute, and then get back to your busy day?

So here’s your tip for a more productive new year: Habits are formed more by daily repetition and not as much by the amount of time you do them in a single sitting. So just take a minute; it's all you need for now.

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