Making Your New Years Resolution Stick

If you’re like most people, after today, you’ve got a few Christmas decorations to put away, and there is a bowl game or two left to watch, but for all practical purposes the holidays are over, you’re back to work and life as you knew it can resume. Unless of course you are one of the millions who made a New Year’s Resolution or two. For you life is theoretically going to start anew. I’ve made my feelings known about resolutions already so no need to repeat myself. Let’s just say that if you made one, you picked the best time of year to do so.

I think one of the more obvious keys to making a change in your life is to have, or begin to have, discipline. If you have it in other areas of your life than you know how to do “it” and apply this same philosophy to your resolution. If you don’t have much discipline then you are going to benefit from the calendar. The biggest ally to discipline is routine. It’s not that hard to brush your teeth in the morning, because it’s become part of your routine. But that’s basically what having discipline is. Doing something (or NOT doing something) again and again, without realizing you are accomplishing a long term goal, in this instance keeping your teeth. If you don’t brush today, your teeth don’t fall out tonight. You brush everyday because it gives a better taste in your mouth now, without taking into account, really, how this helps 20 years from now. That’s having a routine. So how does the calendar help you get this routine which in turn leads to discipline?

For whatever reason, save the newly created, but not totally observed, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, you have from today until Easter without any kind of holiday, or celebrations. Effectively 12-14 consecutive weeks of uninterrupted “routine”. I have found that this stretch of the year is when it’s easiest to make a life change and or add significant gains to whatever you are already doing right in healthy living.

If the holidays and “that time of year” are the enemies of your diet and workout routines, then allow January-March to be your ally. Do it right for a day. Then repeat that seven times. Then repeat that first week 12 more times, without variation. Come Easter what was change will now be routine. And what was hard will now be you.

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Copyright 2007-2008 Steve R. Robbins. All rights reserved.