What is the number one New Year’s resolution?

What is the number one New Year’s resolution? Do NY resolutions even work? How do I beat the odds and achieve mine?

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! 2016 has come to an end, and a shiny new year beckons, sparkling with our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and the promise of yet unknown adventures. At this time, we often find ourselves thinking about the year ahead and New Year’s resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions are fun to make, but hard to stick to. Having a plan and breaking a goal down into easy steps can help. What’s the #1 NY resolution? Most people’s #1 New Year’s resolution is to lose weight and get healthy. Do you start off the new year feeling full of purpose and ready to achieve your goals, but then forget your good intentions well before Valentine’s Day?

Setting resolutions with steps to achieve specific things by a specific date is great, but sometimes the pressure to achieve can overwhelm and sabotage your good intentions. If you have too much on your plate, you simply cannot give anymore, and those resolutions fall by the wayside.

Use these 6 steps to help you achieve all that you want in 2017.

1. KISS

Keep it simple. Don’t make lists and lists of NY resolutions or goals. Make a short list of the things you will do daily – your non-negotiables – and make sure you do them. If you have a huge list of resolutions, you could become overwhelmed, and you might find yourself doing nothing at all.

2. Make Time

We all have the same amount of time in a day. YOU choose how to spend it. Choose wisely. Every day we are pulled in different directions. A lot of the time, clients say to me: “I don’t have time to exercise or prepare a healthy meal”. Value your health and make time. Consistency is key. Create a routine every day and it will just become a habit. For example: “I’m going to eat vegetables with every meal”, or “I am going to drink a litre and a half of water a day”.

3. Find Purpose

Don’t use willpower, this only works in the short term. Willpower is great when everything is going according to plan, but if it’s raining and cold outside and you are tucked up nice and warm in bed, or maybe if you’re ravenous and a chocolate layer cake is calling your name, willpower can disappear fast. Purpose is different. Purpose gets you out of bed at 5.30am to train. Purpose will have you prepared with healthy meals ready to go. Purpose will get you excited for work each day.

Remembering your purpose in life (what drives you and why you want to do something) gives you the motivation to reach a goal no matter what happens. Purpose isn’t about achieving a supermodel vision or being a copy of someone else, but it IS about being the best version of yourself.

4. Forget Perfection

As you know, there is no such thing as perfection. You fall off the wagon, and things don’t go according to plan. Forget it and pick yourself back up, dust yourself off, and resume those healthy habits you had dropped. Make sure you don’t keep going with that bad habit, thinking ‘well I’ve stuffed it now’. No one is perfect; we all do this. Don’t dwell, just accept and move on

5. Embrace Life

Make this year the year that you allow yourself to feel gratitude and love for everything already within your life. Set goals and make resolutions, but also really think about what makes your heart sing. What do you really love to do? What gives you joy? Create some time for this, or for the special people in your life. I know you think you don’t have time, but this feeling of joy will create energy and love that flows into everything you do, so it will all be worthwhile. Love life and all that you have right now. It sounds like a cliché, but everything you have in this moment is something to give thanks for. Take a moment everyday to give thanks for all you have and you will find you have everything you need. Gratitude breeds contentment.

6. Self-Care

Be a friend to yourself and prioritise self-care; learn to give yourself that ‘me’ time. You are important and amazing so you need to treat yourself well, as you would a good friend.