Was this New Year the start of a New You? If so, you are one of thousands of people across the UK this year who made New Year’s resolutions. But how do you make sure yours succeed?
Every year, the start of January signals the start of new habits and promises: joining a gym, or eating more healthily, or working harder. But for all the good intentions, resolutions often fail. Studies have shown that only around 8% of resolutions survive a full year. A quarter of them don’t even make it to the end of their first week. So what’s going wrong?
Perhaps the problem is in the way that we are approaching our resolutions. Setting huge goals or general intentions might make us feel good on New Year’s Day, but we can soon become overwhelmed by them. What does ‘I will eat more healthily’ actually mean? And running a marathon sounds good, but the months of training are actually quite hard work. It’s cold out there, and I’d rather stay in and eat biscuits.
Simply relying on self-control may not be the best way to achieve goals like this. Will power fades over time, and ‘I know I should so I will’ doesn’t work for long.
By contrast, compassion, pride and gratitude are all strong motivators for action. They are also traits that allow us to build and maintain social relationships and overcome loneliness. Acting through compassion, feeling proud of your achievements and being grateful for the support of your friends may be the key to achieving those resolutions. It might also help in strengthening relationships, too.
At WaveLength this year, our intention for 2018 is the same as ever. We want to help more people overcome loneliness. We are driven to achieve this through compassion for those we help, pride at the work we do and gratitude for all of our supporters who help us.
Good luck from us in achieving your New Year’s resolutions. And if you are feeling compassionate, please do donate to WaveLength today. You can feel proud of your contribution, and we will be very grateful.