Did you make any New Years resolutions this year? Are you still on track with the promises you made to “better yourself” this year?  Probably not – if you are like most of us, you had great intentions, but you won’t even make it past the end of January before you give up on them.  Why can’t we stick to those resolutions? We know they will help us become better people in some way – we’ll lose some weight, start exercising, go back to school, whatever. Since keeping our resolutions would be beneficial, why is it so hard to do?

Experts say we fail because we don’t think we can do it. Since something has always gotten in the way before (work, kids, money, etc), we go into resolution-making mode ambivalently – we make the effort for awhile, but don’t really expect that we’ll carry it through. Another thing that gets in the way of resolutions is being unrealistic with what we want to change. A great example is resolving to pay off your credit card by March. That’s a worthy goal, but how realistic is it if you haven’t gotten a raise, gotten a part-time job, or committed to eating ramen noodles every day for the next three months? In other words, you’ll fail if you don’t have a plan in place that you can follow until you reach your goal.

So, how can we actually make New Years resolutions that we can keep and benefit from? One way is to make concrete, attainable goals, not vague ones. For example, instead of saying you will start exercising, make the commitment to walk 30 minutes a day after work, five days a week. This way, you have (1) set a measurable future goal, (2) planned what needs to be done to meet that goal, and (3) given yourself a task that you can review in the short term by assessing how well you did at the end of each week . If you met your goal that week, it’s easy to continue on the next week. If you didn’t meet the challenge, you just have a short period of time to review, figure out what kept you from meeting the goal, and tweak it for the next week. By taking it a week at a time, you won’t abandon the entire resolution as unattainable just because you slipped up once or twice.

Another way to help you keep your New Years resolutions is to employ the power of positive thinking. Positive thinking is an attitude. It helps you change from an I-can’t-do-it mindset to an Of-course-I-can frame of mind. Positive thinking also makes you feel more confident and happy, which contributes to goal completion.

When you decide on your New Years resolutions, start with positive thinking and imaging how your life will change for the better when you reach those goals. If you keep to your exercise goal, aside from being healthier, you’ll feel good when you can zip up those jeans again or can bring in the groceries without having to rest afterwards. Keeping those positive images in your mind will help you keep your resolutions.

Positive thinking also helps by allowing you some freedom to make a mistake. So you didn’t walk one night after work? So what? Don’t start telling yourself how “bad” you are for not doing it – you wouldn’t tell your friend they were bad for not meeting a goal, would you? Be as kind to yourself as you would be to a friend and, instead,use a positive frame-of-mind to tell yourself what you will do to get back on track (you’ll definitely walk tomorrow), then keep that new goal.

So, don’t give up yet! Reframe your New Years resolutions with planning, attainable steps, goal setting, and positive thinking and get ready to achieve your goals!

Dr. David A. Gross, M. D. is a board certified psychiatrist with thirty-six years of clinical practice experience. He specializes in treatment of mood disorders such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders and more. For more information, call his office at 561-496-1281 or email Dr. Gross today.