With a new year, it’s time for New Year’s Resolutions

Another year begins and the social media and comic pages are talking about New Year Resolutions. A chance to change something in your life, or to put down a challenge, can be made at any time but for some reason the beginning of another new year seems to be the favorite time to make that resolution list.

Most resolutions are about health and physical fitness challenges. For serious resolutions, like to stop smoking, or cut back on heavy drinking, are some that can have a profound effect on your life. Some resolutions are wanting to change things in your behavior and how you treat others that are very good intentions that can also have a positive effect on your life. Resolutions that are challenges such as wanting to run your first marathon this year, or running a PR in a 5K or 10K race, are things that you want to improve on.

The list can be short or long depending on your motivation in the New Year. It is probably not the best to make a list of resolutions after a late night of partying. Those resolutions you are probably not going to follow through to completion. The selection of a resolution is something that the individual knows, or wants, to change and has a sound reason for putting the resolution on the list. The reasoning behind a short list is that there is a better chance of making a few positive changes than if the list is long. The reason for the long list is that you know that the odds of completing all of the resolutions is very slim. But if you make half of them you at least accomplished something good to feel positive about.

There have been a few studies on the length of time that a resolution remains front and center for the year. Most last only a short time period of a few weeks or a month. The ones that make it farther into the year are usually the more serious resolutions such as stop smoking, exercising more, or losing weight. These resolutions have a favorable feedback starting right away. The person starts to feel better and sees results immediately that acts as a motivation to continue. The other resolutions that have a good chance of succeeding are those that are already a part of your lifestyle and you want to make small improvements in them. Maybe it is trying to break 40 minutes in a 10K race. Since you already run 10K races this gives you a goal to shoot for some time during the year.

Resolutions that are fun also have a good chance of being completed. You resolve to travel overseas for a vacation is a resolution that will be fun and in many cases a new adventure. Even a trip or vacation that will include seeing a friend or old classmate along the way is another easy resolution to fulfill. You were going to take a vacation this year anyway and looking up a person that you haven’t seen in many years other than an annual Christmas card from them is a nice resolution to have.

From past experience it seems that when you write the resolution down and place it in a location that you will be reminded of is another good trick to following through with your resolution. A little reminder is always a good motivation to try to complete the resolution. The other point about having the resolution visible is that there is no rule that states that if you stop trying to make the change that you can’t start up again during the year. Maybe after a few months the gains are not as far along as you had hoped, but a new start in March or April is still in the New Year and count as being in the year.

Whether you share your resolutions with other people is a personal choice. Some of your resolutions may be personal and something you want to do without a lot of people knowing. Telling only one person about your list of resolutions will eventually find a much larger group of people knowing after a period of time. However the secret resolution found its way to other people has several methods and it just happens. My list has remained the same over the last few years. Some have been completed and there are several others that are still needing some extra effort to complete. The toughest one has been to lose some weight. I make good headway some days and then fall back to square one a short time later. The list includes working out more. Exercising more is another one lately that needs a push to complete. It seems as I get older exercising needs a little more motivation to do.