Making New Year Resolutions That Count…and Last

The secret to making resoultions that stick is to set goals that are personal, tangible and meaningful to you — not anyone else

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Life is the sum of all your choices.

— Albert Camus

Looking back on my life, I realize I was constantly on a diet. In the Eastern-Europe society I grew up in, the concept of beauty was deeply connected to the weight scales. I don’t recall having any sports culture in my family; I even hated gym classes at school because they impacted negatively on my grades. A big part of my life was built around food, including the fact that my father worked in a chocolate factory when I was growing up — something that I thought was a blessing at the time.

The result of all that was an emotional package of short-term eating pleasure and long-term guilt. No wonder why most of my New Year’s resolutions were a copy-paste version of “losing weight”. Year after year, I found myself losing weight and putting it back on. Feelings of accomplishment, followed by self-blame and sometimes even anger for not being able to deal with it. I’ve seen myself up and down again and again, unable to fulfill my goal which made me feel like a failure.

After completing some valuable self-growth work, I finally understand the reasons behind my failures and I would now like to share them with you.

Here are 3 things you can do to make your resolutions count — and last:

1. Make your resolutions personal

I know this might sound strange, but what it means is that I didn’t have a strong enough reason to push myself to transformation. I wanted to lose weight to fit in with certain society requirements of “looking good”. My wish had nothing to do with my own standards because, deep inside, I knew I was a beautiful soul who was struggling to fit in.

You see, we only make real progress towards a goal when it means something personal to us, not when it is imposed on us by others. That is what makes the difference between a resolution and a to-do list. Goals that sound like “I need to do this” or “I should do that” come from a place of survival that reflect a resistance to being a victim of circumstances. Goals that sound like “I want to do this” or “I choose to do that” come from a place of self-empowerment and inspiration.

2. Believe you can achieve your goals

My coaching experience with different people and my own journey of self-discovery make me believe that our worst enemy is fear. The fear of failure, and sometimes even the fear of success, feed our minds with thoughts like  “this is too hard”, “I’ll never make it” or “this is too good to be true.” Such limiting beliefs are the sabotaging inner voices that don’t speak from our true nature. They come as a result of the way we’ve learned to perceive ourselves through the eyes of other people who shaped us, including your family, schooling system, and different life circumstances.

The good news is that once aware of our own voices, we can unlearn them and replace them with positive thoughts that grow us instead of standing in our way. We can always rebuild a life of our own design. We can choose to think that we can’t achieve what we want because of our background, or we can decide that our past is part of our life experience and it has nothing to do with our future.

3. Commit to tangible action steps

I wasn’t making true resolutions; I was making wishes. Being clear on what we want and why we want it is not enough to succeed. The fact of being overweight was the result of my actions (lack of physical activity and overeating). You can’t get different results by doing the same things as before; you need to change your actions if you want to change your results.

To achieve my goal of losing weight, I neded to get clarity on what I truly wanted by breaking my goal down into smaller steps. That meant a specific, measurable and sustainable plan that included physical exercise on specific days (not randomly, depending on my mood or the sunshine outside) and working on my nutrition with a health coach.

What are the areas in your life where you would like to see some improvements? Is it career, health, finances, or personal relationships? What is holding you back right now and what is pushing you forward? As long as what you want is clear, getting there comes much easier. There’s always a solution to everything, and in most of the cases, you already know the answer to what makes you truly happy.

That is what I have learned from my past experiences; this is where I am today:

I set no goals or resolutions related to losing weight. Instead, I have something much stronger — a vision of living a healthy life, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

I know my body is the temple of my soul, so I make sure to take good care of it. I want to feel energized and happy in my own skin. It is the only body I have. I love life and I approve of myself exactly the way I am. I choose to replace self-criticism by self-compassion.

My resolutions now are all about me and my own choices; it has nothing to do with what other people think. I’ve stopped setting unrealistic targets like “I’ll exercise every single day” because I know there will be days I won’t. I’ve learned how to balance different ingredients to stay fit and still enjoy a tasty meal. Staying committed to what sounds achievable is part of my healthy goal setting that won’t turn good intentions into disappointment.

Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. We don’t see things and people as they are; we see them as we are. My plan doesn’t look like a punishment any longer because it is tailored to my needs. It’s not about a short-term cabbage diet anymore; now it’s about a new transformational lifestyle.

Impossible is nothing when we believe.

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You may also enjoy reading 6 Steps to Creating Your Future by Michael Annese