Ever wonder why you seem to make the same resolutions year after year? Diets, workouts, quitting vices, etc etc, but they never seem to take a hold on you long enough for them to really make a difference in your life.
Here are some of the reasons why it’s hard to keep your yearly resolutions:
#1. Wrong Motivation
When you’re doing things for the wrong reasons, the energy and the passion you need to fuel your pursuit dies down quite fast. That’s why when your heart is not in it, you will find it extremely difficult to stick to your guns.
Before you make your resolutions, you have to get to the bottom of why you want to do it in the first place. If you want to diet so you would have a beach body, then suddenly your beach trip gets cancelled, chances are, you’ll probably quit your diet. Maybe not all at once, but every meal, you give yourself a little more allowance.
But if your reason for dieting is to get healthier, to feel lighter, to achieve your correct body weight, then you’ll have a more stable reason why you’re doing it. Aim for the long term effects more than immediate gratification.
#2. Unrealistic Expectations
Like most things in life, we need to manage our expectations and be ready to adjust when the kinks kick in the system.
When you start working out at the gym or decide to cut back on caffeine or smoking for example, you need to give yourself an ample amount of time to adjust. Your body can be resistant to change and you’ll experience drawbacks.
You need to learn how to take these in stride. Just because you don’t see results right away doesn’t mean it’s not working or it’s not doing you any good.
Like they say, two steps forward, one step back. We can’t help it if progress takes this route.
If resolutions teach us anything, it’s that we need discipline to be able to move forward in our endeavors. Without it, everything will fall apart, and before you know it, you’re right back where you started.
#3. Laziness
We make all sorts of crazy promises that we know we can’t keep. It’s as simple as that.
We get carried away with the novelty of a New Year and with that we get swept up in the haze of promises of new beginnings, new hope, a clean slate, and we join the bandwagon any way we can.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling a renewed energy coursing through our body. Sometimes that’s all we need to push us to be better people.
But the problem is that too many people push themselves to make promises they know are not things they want to achieve or accomplish. Going into something half-heartedly is like not doing it at all.
If you’re too lazy to actually find what it is you want to change and how to change your life, then no change will happen.
#4. All long term, with no short term goals
It can be quite daunting to reach for your ultimate goal every single day. Sometimes you don’t feel nearly there and this discourages you from moving forward with it. You’ll probably find yourself changing your course.
The trick can be found in how you approach your ultimate goal. You have to lay down the small steps in front of you as ‘baby goals’ that are reachable for the time being.
This ensures that you are still on your path, but it also gives you the more immediate gratification in small accomplishments.