New Year resolutions slipped away? Here’s what to do. A long time ago, I worked at a gym. January meant one thing – a deluge of new members. For the first few weeks of the year, it was packed. Every bench, weight machine, and piece of cardio equipment would constantly be occupied. Three weeks later, without fail, the crowd would thin, and it would be back to just the regulars.

By mid to late January, it’s common for most of our New Year resolutions to have slipped away. But hope is not lost, and we don’t need to wait another eleven months to begin again.

Whether it’s January 26th or June 21st, every day can be the start of another year.

Here are five ways to pick up our resolutions again:

1.. Consider the long term consequences of our actions – The small habits necessary to achieve our goals may seem insignificant day to day. After all, what could be the harm of skipping today’s walk or eating one extra piece of cake? If it was just one missed workout or one over-indulgence, there’s probably very little harm done. The problem is when one missed workout becomes a week of them. Or one extra slice becomes the whole cake. This is where some long term thinking becomes important. What are the consequences of engaging in the new habit, perhaps not today, but in a month or a year? Maybe we’ll feel good about ourselves. Maybe we’ll feel more positive, or more inclined to make healthier choices throughout the day. And if we consistently skip the new habit? Perhaps we already know the consequences of that, if we’re living it right now. We might feel sluggish throughout the day, too reliant on coffee to get going, and less likely to make other healthy choices. This long term pondering (especially if we write it down) becomes the incentive to pick up our resolutions right where we left off. Avoiding negative consequences is often a more potent motivator than seeking positive outcomes. Reminding ourselves of what we want to achieve as well as what we’re trying to avoid can give us a monumental boost.

2.. Change the environment, change our actions – If we’re trying to instill a new habit, we don’t have to rely on willpower alone. Changing our environment can make it far easier to be successful. Anything that facilitates our new habit can be included – such as using sticky notes and alarms as reminders – and anything that represents an obstacle can be eliminated.If we’re trying to save money, then prepping meals and snacks can reduce the temptation to buy something. If we’re trying to read more books, we can consider deleting social media and games from our phone and installing library apps instead. We can also learn from past mistakes to better prepare us for the future. If we keep running out of time for a morning walk, we can try incorporating a walk into our daily tasks. For example, we could decide to return phone calls while walking, or on our way home we could get off the bus a few stops early and walk the rest of the way.

3.. Habit stacking – It can be tough to remember a new habit, especially in isolation. By linking it to something we’re already doing, we form a memory trace between the existing and new habits, making it more likely we’ll do both together. For example, if our resolution is to meditate more, we can select pockets of waiting time to focus on five deep breaths for a quick one-minute meditation (for example, while waiting for the kettle to boil). Or if we’ve resolved to drink more water, then we can make sure we take a big drink every time we go to the bathroom. At first, it may take reminders and conscious effort to remember to do both habits – but it doesn’t take long for our brain to link the two.

4.. Don’t let a bad day (or month) hold us back – We’ve probably all experienced this – we have a positive streak going, and then one bad day completely derails all of that. It’s probably one reason why our New Year resolutions slip away in the first place. It is deflating to miss a day or five, and we can feel like the lost momentum has sent us right back to day one. But the reality is often quite different. Each time we engage in a habit, we take positive steps forward – and a few missed days doesn’t undo that. All-or-nothing thinking will have us believing that one missed day equals failure, but if we think about it logically (or talk to some trusted friends who can help us see sense), we’ll realise that isn’t the case. Accept the missed day(s) and forge ahead anyway – a slow burning log lasts longer and is far more impactful than a burst of heat and light from a handful of kindling.

5.. Practice self-compassion – This is a tricky one, because many of us are not accustomed to self-compassion. And yet, when we’re making changes and striving to better ourselves, it becomes especially important to treat ourselves with kindness and understanding.Making changes is hard. It’s far easier to coast along with the inertia of what we’ve always done. In making intentional decisions to change something, we can be met with unexpected obstacles. While it may seem easy on the surface to introduce a new habit – say, eating an extra serve of green vegetables each day – once we embark on it, we can encounter challenges that we couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Old beliefs, unhelpful attitudes, incorrect assumptions, or past anxieties can arise and put the brakes on us before we even build momentum. Perhaps we were always served tasteless, mushy vegetables as a child, and we harbour a strong dislike for them. Perhaps we carry deep-seated beliefs on how much food we’resupposed to be eating, so that anything “extra” becomes imbued with feelings of shame. Or perhaps we struggle with the sensation of fullness that comes with eating fibre-rich vegetables. Starting a new habit can be more about overcoming obstacles than the habit itself. Self-compassion also includes how we treat ourselves when things go awry, like when we miss a day, or when an obstacle derails us, or when we don’t get the outcome we’re expecting. Self-compassion doesn’t always come naturally, so it can be helpful to think about what we’d say to someone we love, if they were facing a similar struggle. It’s not a time to shame and blame ourselves; rather, it’s a time to keep our self-talk kind and understanding, so that we can learn from the mistake and move forward anyway.

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