If you look back to last year, can you confidently say that you stuck to the resolutions that you had set at the beginning of the year? How long did your resolve to be a “new me” last? The problem with the New Year’s hysteria is that it is akin to a sudden burst of energy—it can and will only last for so long before inertia ensues. The best way to make sure that your resolutions go beyond the 2-month lifespan, you need to adopt a lifestyle of continuous personal reflection and self-improvement.

 

Why Do My New Year’s Resolutions Fail?

The beginning of a new year brings with it social media posts about what people want to do and be in the new year. There’s something exciting about a new beginning; a chance to start all over again, plot a new path of success and dream up new goals. What is odd, however, is that this sense of newness seems to be mostly reserved for the new year. What happens to the goals that were set the year before? Have you achieved them all? If so, that’s fantastic! If not, perhaps it’s time to rethink the way you set goals, whether they are personal or career-related.

An article in Psychology Today outlines four reasons why new year’s resolutions fail by February:

  1. Your goals aren’t clear enough.
  2. You start to feel overwhelmed.
  3. You feel discouraged.
  4. You’re not ready for change.

What these four reasons point to is the fact that we often want to see results now. We often forget that everything worth pursuing takes time and that most of the growth takes place in the journey. While it’s great to set goals in the new year, it is equally important to remember that you have a whole lifetime to achieve greatness. Do not let pressure to be an overnight success paralyse you. Take your time and plan according to the resources you have (time, money, energy, health).

If you don’t have goals for the new year, it is okay. The 1st of September is just as new as the first of January—both offer new possibilities and an opportunity to be a new you. The goal should be continuous development; this involves making self-reflection a daily or weekly process.

This month, we will be running a series called A Lifestyle of Continuous Personal Growth. We will be focussing on the importance of intentionality, and we’ll journey together to make sure that our new year’s resolutions don’t fizzle out by the end of the first quarter of the year. We’ll also look at the best ways to go about achieving your goals.

This year marks the beginning of a life of intention. Are you ready to join us as we work every day to be better and do better?

 

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