Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions in 2024 Is Possible!

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Eating better, exercising more… You know the drill, we all want to stick to our New Year’s resolutions, but often after a few weeks, we already feel like giving up. Personally, I can’t count the resolutions I’ve never kept: a 100% vegetarian diet, 10 minutes of meditation in the morning, turning off my phone after 9 PM… all of it ended in a gradual letting go.

But here we are, sometimes we are really motivated and this year, I promise, we will stick to our goals!

To help you keep your resolutions, I’ll share the best productivity tips that bring satisfaction. So hang in there and I wish you a very Happy New Year 2024!

1. Stick to your resolutions in 21 days

21 days is the time it takes for the brain to adopt a new habit. While this period varies from person to person, it is indeed possible to keep a resolution by practicing daily.

It was plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz who established this 21-day observation in the 1960s. This concept is sometimes criticized, as it mainly involves creating a habit by “hacking” the brain to execute an action more automatically.

While this theory has never been scientifically proven, experts agree that after a few weeks, the new habit is registered by your brain.

So you must stay motivated in the first few weeks to keep your resolutions.

2. Focus on realistic goals

Setting impossible goals is the number one reason for giving up a resolution. So, if you have the same goal every year but can’t keep up, it might be too ambitious. There’s nothing wrong with scaling back a resolution; on the contrary.

It’s better to complete a small project that makes you proud than to abandon an unrealistic resolution.

Unrealistic goals will undermine your self-confidence and leave you with a bitter taste for the rest of the year.

Before setting your goals, assess your schedule, the time you want to dedicate to your projects, and be realistic and honest with yourself, as this is the best way to achieve success.

3. Know your priorities

Not all resolutions are created equal. Some are life goals (e.g., writing a book, starting your own business), others are imperatives (e.g., learning a new skill for a better job), and others are wishes (e.g., traveling, taking time for yourself).

To effectively stick to your resolutions, I recommend taking the time to consider which category your resolutions fall into and how important they are to you.

If you enjoy creating a vision board, set different timeframes for your goals in order of priority.

4. Prioritize consistency

It is better to stick to 15 minutes of exercise or meditation per day rather than a long session of several hours on the weekend and nothing at all during the week.

I learned this lesson while learning a foreign language. By studying for 20 to 30 minutes a day for three months, I was able to reach a very good level of oral communication without too much effort.

Remember that the brain is a muscle and it works better when trained.

Consistency paves the way to success. It certainly requires a bit of discipline, but by applying the 21-day rule, once your resolution is part of your routine, you have won!

5. Do your best

If there were only one rule for achieving success, it would be this one. Doing your best every day means you continue to work while accepting that some days will be incredibly productive and others will be more difficult.

By doing your best every day, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve done everything to succeed and no regrets!

Doing your best is, by the way, one of the four basic principles of the Toltec agreements.

By adopting these tips, you will move forward in your projects, but you will also boost your self-confidence, and that is priceless.