2023 is here! The month of January can be an exciting and energizing time. You’re motivated to kick off new habits, boost your activity and energy levels, and eat more veggies. But, if your 2023 goals are ambitious and numerous, January equally can be stressful and anxiety-inducing.
Research tells us that New Years’ resolutions that stick are:
- Small
- Sustainable
- Repeatable
- Bring you joy
Below I’ve outlined the 6 simple steps I’ve used to build multiple, joy-inducing habits that started out as ambitious New Year’s resolutions. (Think: My goal to meditate every day in 2022.) As you look at your 2023 these are the six steps you can use to choose and pursue New Year’s resolutions that stick:
Don’t like calling these ideas ‘Resolutions’? Call them something else that gets you going: goal, intention, dream, hope, vision, habit. Call them whatever as long as it resonates with you!
Ground
Check in with yourself. Where is your mindset right now? How do you speak to yourself? How do you make time already for things that matter to you? How do you feel about where you are in life right now?
Your mindset going in to this exercise matters. If your mindset is negative and critical, the resolutions you set will be negative and critical. These negative or even punitive resolutions may fill you with dread, not joy, and you’ll likely drop them from your routine pretty quickly.
Dream
The sky’s the limit. Write down every single possible thing you want to do and accomplish this year. Just brain dump. Your ideas don’t have to be good or productive or useful or career-oriented. Let your mind run wild with the boundless possibilities ahead of you.
Fill in the blank: “In 2023 I want more _________.” More walking, more baking, more hikes, more time in nature, more reading, more chocolate, etc. Personally, this year I want to bake more sourdough bread.
Choose
Choose one. I said it. One intention or goal or dream that really speaks to you. That calls to you. That makes your heart sing and puts a smile on your face. Pick that one. Not the one you’ve done every year or the one that makes your stomach sink just thinking about it. Not the one you feel that you’re “supposed to do”. Pick the one that you’ll look back a year or many years from now with gratitude in your heart that you took it up in this moment. The one that adds to your life rather than takes away from it.
Ask yourself: Why did you choose this resolution? How does setting this resolution make you feel about yourself and your life? Does this resolution add value to your life?
If your resolution makes you feel terrible about yourself or makes you unhappy you just won’t do it, so pick something that brings a smile to your face.
Start small
What’s one, small thing you can do in the next hour, next day, or next week to move towards this goal? If your goal is to touch your toes, then sign up for a yoga class with a friend. If it’s to write a book, try writing a paragraph every Monday morning. If it’s to run a 5k, put on your running shoes and go for a walk. For every 5 minutes of walking, run for 1 minute. Do that for 30 minutes.
Like yoga and mindfulness, building a new habit can demand your physical strength, but it also can ask you to construct new mental pathways that support this behavior pattern. A resolution sticks when you make the action of doing it easy. The easier a resolution is, the more you do it. The more you do it, the more you make time for it. With days or weeks of consistency you’ll slowly build those mental pathways that support this resolution turned habit.
Find an accountability partner
If you feel comfortable, share your goal with someone you trust. They may be working towards the same goal and you can work towards it together, or they can support you and hold you accountable.
I meet with my two accountability partners (“accountabilibuddies”) each month. We share our progress on our goals and support each other through the ups and downs of making lifestyle changes (like reading more books) and achieving our intended career goals. They hold me to what I promised in the intervening weeks between our phone calls.
Give yourself grace
Pursuing a New Years’ resolution is challenging because it likely requires you to try and fail repeatedly to form a new habit. Try and fail and try and fail and try and fail until your habit becomes automatic, until you don’t have to ask yourself: “Do I want to run before work?” “Do I want to do yoga?” You just make time for it and do it.
Failure is okay! Failure is part of the process and completely understandable. You are not a failure. You are trying your best and you are learning every day. And that is all you can do!
// Do you make New Years’ resolutions? Tell me about your 2023 resolutions in the comments below. //
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I’m Sarah, a travel and wellness writer based in the US. Join my monthly newsletter to receive exclusive travel tips and be among the first to hear about my upcoming yoga retreats!
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