New Year's Resolutions - featured image

New Year’s Resolutions: How to Keep Them

Featured Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay 

Are you in the habit of starting each new year with a list of New Year’s resolutions? Many people do. However, almost as many fail to follow through with their positive intentions. In this post, we share some tips for making realistic resolutions and keeping them.

Trim Your List of New Year’s Resolutions Down to Only One

If you have a long list of resolutions, you may feel burdened by them. Instead, why not resolve to make only one resolution? Then make an honest effort to keep that one resolution all year long.

After all, small and simple changes in your habits can lead to lasting improvements in your life. You might even need to make further refinements to your single resolution.

For instance, let’s say your New Year’s resolution this year is to get more exercise. That is a pretty broad resolution, so get specific and trim your resolution down even further.

Let’s just say you’re a total couch potato, with your focus on little else besides running your business. If so, then a more specific resolution for you might be just to walk around the block a few times each week.

That doesn’t sound like much, but that’s the point. If your New Year’s resolution feels like a burden, you probably won’t get very far.

For example, if you’re not in the habit of exercising regularly, then you probably won’t use a gym membership after the first few days. And that’s if you even go at all!

Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions Realistic

Maybe you have resolved to become one of the world’s wealthiest individuals by year’s end—even though you’re starting with a negative balance in your checking account. If that’s the case, be sure to reach out to 24cash.ca for help.

Once you have that handled, of course, it’s possible that you could achieve your goal in the short space of only a year. However, for most people, closing such an enormous gap is well-nigh impossible.

Instead, resolve to become better at managing your finances, both at home and in your business. Then take small but specific steps to do so, such as creating a budget and tracking your spending.

Start Small and Allow Good Habits to Build

Let’s say you’re determined to attract new clients to your business this year. So maybe your New Year’s resolution is to learn more about marketing in general and apply what you learn to your business.

However, you need to make your resolution specific so you can measure your results. Therefore, you could write something like this in your journal: “My New Year’s resolution is to read 52 books about marketing this year, one each week.”

Now, while your resolution is specific, your overall objective can remain large: You want to become better at marketing your business. And this year, you’ll make progress toward that objective by reading books about marketing.

Encourage yourself in your new habit by tracking your results. For example, each time you finish reading a marketing book, make a note of your accomplishment with a big red “X” on a wall calendar in your office.

As you progress with your reading project throughout the year, those visual cues will spur your enthusiasm for your marketing efforts. By year’s end, your New Year’s resolution may well have become a full-blown passion.

RELATED ARTICLE: MARKETING FOR NON-MARKETERS: GET GOOD AT IT BY LEARNING TO LOVE IT

And, who knows? In the years to come, you could become someone others turn to as an expert in what it takes to market a business in your niche.

Conclusion

So whether your New Year’s resolutions have to do with bettering your health, improving the way you manage your finances, or attracting more customers to your business, make each resolution small, realistic, and manageable.

Then next year, you can improve on your improvements. And with each new year, you will always be reaching toward the better human being and the more expert businessperson you are becoming.

About the Author

Carrol Strain is a Top Rated copywriter on Upwork. She is also editor and on-call writer for the Business Opportunities blog.