How to keep your New Year's resolutions: from words to deeds

Surely on several occasions you have made a long list of resolutions for the New Year at the end of the last days of December; a list of goals that you have rarely ended up reaching.

Setting these resolutions for the start of the new year is an excellent way to start it with motivation, optimism and positivity; however, most people find it difficult to achieve this once they find themselves with the responsibility of keeping their word.

New Year's resolutions can be based on the desire we have to improve or change some aspect of our lives that we do not quite like or effect a radical change in us themselves.

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Tips to (really) fulfill your New Year's resolutions

If you want to change that negative dynamic that does not allow you to fulfill those good wishes to start the new year that is coming, keep reading. Below we explain the main tips or strategies that you can follow to fulfill all the resolutions that you set for yourself at the end of the year.

1. set realistic goals

Set realistic and concrete goals when setting objectives and resolutions for the new year It will help us not to get frustrated in case we do not get it at first and also not to give up during the first days or weeks of the start of the new year.

This means that we must take into account our real abilities and possibilities before setting a specific New Year's resolution that may be out of our reach.

For example, if we start the daily habit of running on January 1, we cannot expect to run a marathon on the 5th or the 10th, since this activity requires training, practice and experience.

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2. Write a list of purposes

Writing all our resolutions on a physical or virtual list is a very positive exercise that will allow us to begin to keep in mind daily what we want to achieve.

Briefly but delimited describe our purposes and accompany each description with a summary of the qualities and virtues that we possess to achieve it will also help us psychologically to achieve any goal that we let's propose

3. Applies action triggers

The technique of action triggers It is very useful to carry out activities or chains of actions that we must take responsibility for during the year, such as new resolutions. And it is that if we want to learn how to fulfill the New Year's resolutions, it is very important to situate ourselves in the present moment and adopt very short-term commitments, so as not to leave things "for another time".

An action trigger is a faithful mental representation of an action or a process made up of several interlocking activities that, In addition, it is linked to a specific moment of the day, and that allows us to carry out the determined action in the future as we have imagined it in our life. head. For example: "When I finish breakfast, I go to my room, I sit in front of the computer and I write a new line for my novel."

These triggers They are automatically activated when we are faced with a certain stimulus, such as a physical place, a time of day or when we meet a specific person or people.

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4. Talk to others about your goals

Talking to other people around us about the goals we have set helps us establish a tacit or verbalized commitment with them, who in the future will speak to us about the subject and will be testimonials of our progress.

This serves as a great source of motivation, since their mere presence and the fact of talking daily with them about the progress regarding our purposes will push us to move forward, having generated high expectations in all those people.

5. Segment the challenges

Segmenting the biggest challenges by transforming them into smaller and short-term sub-objectives will allow us to be clear about what to do in each moment and visualize each of the sub-objectives globally, being able to prioritize some over others or give more importance to certain urgencies over others.

Likewise, by segmenting large responsibilities into smaller tasks, we can close short cycles in a matter of hours or a few days, thus achieving faster progress to achieve our final purpose and providing us with greater motivation to move forward.

6. Organize and plan purposes

Having order in life is essential to successfully carry out any project and that the tasks to be done do not seem too intimidating to start solving them; That is why in order to achieve our objectives and purposes we must be methodical, orderly and plan in advance each of the steps that we are going to take in our process.

For that, it is advisable to write down in an agenda or diary all the steps and phases that the process that we are going to start will consist of until the desired purpose is reached. Besides that, It is important to take note of each of the unforeseen events, logistical requirements or obstacles that we can meet during the realization of the New Year's resolution.

7. visualize them

view in detail a goal before achieving it is another of the psychological exercises that contribute significantly to being motivated and with the necessary attitude to achieve our goal.

For this it is useful both to create a clear image of the objective achieved in our head and to verbalize frequently the purpose that we are going to achieve and say aloud all the steps that we will follow to to get it.