New Year New Me
Blog Post: By Bailey McConnell, RMCI
New Year New Me:
At the start of each New Year, we come up with resolutions, goals, and plans to make ourselves look/ feel better for the new year and onward. Although we have the best intentions of making the resolutions, we often do not follow through on these goals or stop them after a short time of starting them. You might be wondering why it is so hard to follow through on your intentions. Well, most times we make goals for ourselves without making plans on how to incorporate our goals into our everyday lives. Some of our goals might be too big to accomplish at the beginning. We might not know where or how to start our goals. Well, what do I do? Listed below are some steps to making and accomplishing our New Years' goals.
Make goals for ourselves that are reasonable and achievable: When making New Year's resolutions we often make grand plans. For instance, I want to lose 100 lbs., and take a vacation in Jamaica this year. Yes, that might be a great goal, but we need to take into consideration how likely it is that you might meet these goals. Make goals for yourself that are realistic to your current situation. That might mean scaling back your goals to losing 50 lbs. this year and taking a non-specific vacation. Research has found that making goals that are approach-oriented are more successful than making avoidance-oriented goals (Oscarsson et al., 2020). This means that making goals that encourage one to go out and do things end up being more achievable than goals of avoiding things. For instance, a goal of working out more throughout the year is easier to maintain than not eating fast food all year. Make goals that work best for the betterment of yourself.
Make short- and long-term goals: Oftentimes when we make goals for ourselves, we think in terms of one big goal. Big goals are great overarching ideas, but we need smaller goals to get ourselves moving towards that bigger objective. For example, if you want to read more this new year you might want to make a small goal of finding a day to go to a bookstore to buy a new book. Then you would want to make another small goal to start reading the book and reading so many pages by the end of the week. Making achievable small steps is a part of the way to completing your resolution.
Form an accountability group: It can be hard to hold yourself accountable to your goal when you are the only one who knows about your plan. Try to tell others your intentions as they can ask you about how you are doing. You and another person, whether that be a friend or a partner, could start a resolution together. This way you have someone to work on our goals with. You each can hold the other accountable when it might seem difficult to keep going.
Don't be too hard on yourself if you do not make your goal: If you do not make your small or end goal do not be hard on yourself. Life is not only about succeeding but is making mistakes and failing. Recognize where you could change things or could have done better. Learn from your mistakes or missteps.
Celebrate the small successes: When you do meet those small goals, celebrate. Be proud of yourself that you were able to stick to your plan and carry it through. Make sure to experience and remember what it feels like to accomplish your goals. This feeling can be so helpful when you hit a speed bump and do not feel like you can go on. Allow yourself to feel your emotions.
Bailey McConnell
A dedicated intern student who has experience leading undergraduate peers in mental health awareness and suicide prevention. Bailey is a warm and caring skilled supervised therapist who is focused on building a safe and open environment for children, teens, adults, families, and couples to navigate and help process their thoughts and feelings. She has provided counseling to adults going through addiction and homelessness with various diagnoses. She can work with all different populations in a judgment free zone. Her goal is to work with and aid clients through their respective journey and help them learn new positive ways to view and cope with life’s stressors. Both In-Person sessions (Mondays, Tuesdays, Sundays) and Virtual sessions available.
Resources
Oscarsson, M., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., & Rozental, A. (2020). A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLoS ONE, 15(12). https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0234097