Resolve to be resolute

The new year brings a chance for self improvement. Unfortunately, most people give up on their resolutions once they start being a pain. With a few simple steps, you can keep your resolutions until 2012 rolls around.

Ah, the time for New Year’s resolutions is upon us. Time to look back at the past year and try to ?x all the things we screwed up. What fun.

According to GoalsGuy.com, “The tradition of the New Year’s resolutions goes all the way back to 153 B.C. Janus, a mythical king of early Rome, was placed at the head of the calendar. With two faces, Janus could look back on past events and forward to the future. Janus became the ancient symbol for resolutions and many Romans looked for forgiveness from their enemies and also exchanged gifts before the beginning of each year.”

So like Janus, we use the new year as an opportunity to look behind us at all the stuff that has happened and then look forward and see what we can do better.

Many common goals, such as becoming more healthy and reducing debt, seem to go on year after year and lack specificity. These resolutions are not new and rarely get accomplished fully because they are such big, vague goals.

In order to avoid near-immediate failure with new resolutions, here are a few helpful tips from LiveStrong.com.

First, write down your resolutions. This helps transform your resolutions from abstract thoughts into something more concrete. In addition, be as speci?c as possible. Instead of writing, “Lose weight,” write, “Lose 15 pounds by April of this year.”

The second way to help you keep your resolution is to break it down into smaller, more manageable goals. People often feel overwhelmed by the thought of accomplishing such a large undertaking. However, if broken up into smaller goals, the task seems much more attainable. For example, if your goal was to lose 15 pounds, break up the total goal into losing ?ve pounds per month.

The third tip is to develop a plan to accomplish your resolution. If you want to lose 15 pounds, what is needed to achieve this goal? What would be your calorie intake? What type of exercise regiment would you do? Developing a plan makes the path to accomplishing your goals much easier.

The fourth and ?nal tip is to reward yourself for achieving goals. Plan a reward system for when you achieve your smaller goals and a big reward when you accomplish your overall goal.

With all these tips, those big goals won’t seem quite so daunting and who knows, maybe 2011 will be the year that your resolutions will finally get accomplished.