On January 1 of every year, people are buzzing with New Year Resolutions. Come Jan 31, or Jan 7 even most people either fail or forget they had a resolution.

As someone who has been trying to build better habits for a few years now, here are 3 key mistakes we make when forming New Year Resolutions.

Mistake 1: Imitating Others

We all have that one friend who’s able to do everything. We get inspired and we want to copy them. We end up setting resolutions or goals based on the lifestyle of that person.
The problem is, everyone leads different lives. In order to achieve a goal someone else has, you also have to check if :

• Does this goal really add value to me?

• Can my current lifestyle allow me to achieve this goal?

• Am I doing this to impress someone else or improve myself?

Quite often, there isn’t a reality check and we fail. Reflecting on why we want to achieve these goals helps increase the chances of success.

Mistake 2: Attempting too many things

There are a lot of potential goals. There’s a temptation to take on many things. Unfortunately, a new year doesn’t make your current limitation of 24 hours disappear. It’s easier to achieve 10 goals in 10 years by pursuing 1 goal every year. Pursuing 10 goals at the start of the year may not show the same progress even if we take 10 years.

Things that can help:

• Pick a goal or two and aim at establishing them as habits

• Once you succeed with a goal, i.e. it is on ‘auto pilot’ move on to a new one

You don’t have to wait for January every year 😅. January is just a placebo effect. Resolutions and goals can be pursued at any time.

Mistake 3: Not realizing our limitations

Social Media makes comparison an easy act. We often feel that we are under achieving while others are acing it. That isn’t true. People have different circumstances that allow them to go at different speeds.

Ex: Aiming to run 21KMs is unrealistic for someone who doesn’t even run. It’s a little more realistic for someone who already runs 15KMs.
A more realistic goal would be to start running short distances of 2-3 KM. On achieving that goal, one can aim to run 5KMs, 10KMs and so on.

We’re capable

It’s not that we can’t pursue the goals we choose to. We do make common mistakes like the ones above and fail. If we avoid mistakes, we increase the chance of success.

There are different aspects to consider in pursuing our goals. I aim to capture that in the month of January to help you out 😄 (and myself).

I’m pursuing a couple of goals myself so you’re not alone in this.

p.s. Happy New Year!