The start of a New Year always begins with making goals. After the celebrations of the holiday season end on New Year’s Day, we take time to review the past year and reflect on all of our triumphs and challenges. We think about what made our year successful as well as those things that made us feel sad or discouraged. From our reviews, we invariably come up with a list of resolutions and ways we want to change our lives in the coming year. For many, these resolutions concern losing weight, exercising more, focusing on personal wellness, and spending time with family and friends.
No matter the resolutions we set for ourselves, it is always difficult to keep them for an entire year. Sometimes we cannot even make it to February and by Valentine’s Day we have already lost sight of the goals that we had made in back in January. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), the key to keeping our New Year’s resolutions is being realistic. Making plans to completely change our lives is what leads us to drop our resolutions early. We need to make sure our goals for the New Year are actually attainable with a little hard work and determination. Also, the APA has several other tips when it comes to making resolutions that will last. These include:
- Setting small attainable goals
- Changing one behavior at a time
- Not getting discouraged
- Asking for help
To hear more advice from the APA, please visit the American Psychological Association’s website. Also, if you are in need of some help with your New Year’s resolutions, check out our local senior center pages. Here you will find information on exercise, nutrition, health, and wellness classes that are taking place in you area.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), the key to keeping our New Year’s resolutions is being realistic.
