It’s Half Year! How Many Of Your New Year Resolutions Have You Actually Achieved?

By Lilian Wamaitha
I don’t know about you but I am one of those people who like making resolutions every New Year and hold myself accountable to them.
But a majority of the time, I find myself not living up to my New Year’s resolutions and I know so many of us are sailing in the same boat.
We are now halfway through the year 2018.
How many of those resolutions you made come the beginning of the year have you fulfilled? How many are you working towards?
New Year is like flipping to a new chapter in a book, which is why we are willing to make a change.
You will agree with me that probably those first few weeks of the New Year will be spent trying to fulfill those resolutions. Then comes February and everything is forgotten and what you look forward to is the next year to make more resolutions.
The question is; why is it so hard to follow through with your new year’s goals?
1. You resolutions are never specific enough
Does this sound like your New Year’s resolutions? Lose weight, save, start a business, get another job, and eat healthy?
Well, that is where the problem lies and the reason why you are yet to achieve any of your goals yet.
Having goals with no clear action plans is just like building castles in the air. Giving a little bit of details to your goals makes them more realist and actionable.
For instance, instead of saying lose weight, how about a goal like; lose 10kgs by the end of April. Then further break it down to lose at least 3Kgs every month. This will actually make you work towards that.
If your resolution was to get a better job, what have you done to make that happen? If you are still working the same job and haven’t started applying for better ones, you are not doing yourself any favors.
2. You lack an accountability partner
Having someone or a group of people to hold you accountable to those goals makes it easier to fulfill them. This person will walk with you throughout your journey and send you updates on your progress to keep you pressing on.
One thing I like telling people is if you want to follow through with your resolutions, you should not keep them to yourself. Have someone you trust and share with them what you aspire to do. Make them promise to be there for you and to hold you accountable until you fulfill each and every one of them.
3. You don’t write them down
This happens to almost all of us. Come the beginning of the year, you will have goals that you want to fulfill but then you don’t write them down.
It’s one thing to have your goals listed in your mind where you are bound to forget and another to have them written down somewhere where you can always referrer and see if you are on track.
Having a physical list of things you want to achieve helps you make sense and figure out the best approach to seeing them through.
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4. You wait until it’s too late to start planning your resolutions
Who said that when that clocks ticks midnight on December 31^st that it’s the best time to make your New Year resolutions? Nothing magical happens on January 1^st so you need to stop living a fantasy and waiting until then to decide you want to make changes in your life.
Resolutions are not about wishes on a piece of paper but they are about your ability to recognize that you need change and actually make plans of making that happen.
As it happens, if you goals are more dependent on a date rather than you attitude and readiness, then you are bound to fail.
The take away here is to start now. Life doesn’t start in January but every day you are breathing should herald the time to start making changes in any aspect of your life that you feel is not going okay.
The New Year should be all about taking stock of how far you have gone with your pervious goals and creating a way forward on how to make things better in the New Year.
5. You lack the discipline to see it through
When you think about it, those New Year resolutions you make are not so hard to make happen, you just lack the discipline. Only 8% or people actually achieve their New Year’s goals.
This means that a lot of New Year’s resolutions get ditched not very long after they are made.
So what is the point of making resolutions if you never follow through?
The problem is that most of us just set out these goals because others are doing it. If your goals for instance are to lose weight, you need to do it because of a certain reason and not because it’s on everybody else’s list.
This way you ensure that you don’t keep procrastination.
In conclusion, New Year’s resolutions are not all about January first. If there are things you feel you need to change and accomplish in future, start setting the goals now. And if you have already made such goals, it’s about time you worked on them.
Its you turn,
Think about your New Year’s resolutions that you have made over the years? How many have you achieved? Let’s share below to encourage those who feel like it’s too late to see theirs through.
Lilian is a Communication Officer at Career Point Kenya. Email lilian@www.careerpointkenya.co.ke for any enquiries.