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 want to give up. Personally, I have lost count of the resolutions I have never kept: a 100% vegetarian diet, meditating for 10 minutes each morning, turning off my phone after 9 PM… all of it has resulted in a gradual letting go.

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

To help you keep your resolutions, I’m sharing 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

It takes 21 days for the brain to adopt a new habit. While this period may vary among individuals, it is indeed possible to stick to a resolution by practicing daily.

This observation about 21 days was made by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz in the 1960s. Although this concept is sometimes criticized, 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 has been registered by your brain.

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

2. Focus on realistic goals

Setting impossible goals is the main reason for abandoning a resolution. So, if you have the same goal every year but struggle to keep up, it might be too ambitious. There’s nothing wrong with scaling down a resolution; on the contrary.

It’s better to complete a small project that makes you proud rather than give up on 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, take stock of your schedule, the time you want to devote to your projects, and be realistic and honest with yourself; that’s the best way to achieve success.

3. Know your priorities

Not all resolutions are 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 some are wishes (traveling, taking time for yourself).

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

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

4. Prioritize consistency

It’s better to stick to 15 minutes of exercise or meditation each day than to have a long session of several hours on the weekend and nothing 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 works better when trained.

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

5. Do your best

If there were only one rule to achieve success, it would be this: doing your best every day means continuing to work while accepting that some days will be incredibly productive and others will be more challenging.

By doing your best every day, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did everything you could to succeed and, most importantly, no regrets!

Doing your best is actually one of the four basic principles of the Toltec agreements.

By adopting these tips, you will progress in your projects, but more importantly, you will boost your self-confidence, and that is priceless.