Each new year, many people chose to make resolutions. Licensed psychologist Dr. Shena Smith has some advice on how to make the resolutions stick.
Dr. Smith said when you’re making resolutions, pick something that is meaningful to you.
“If it’s not important to you, you’re not going to work toward it,” Dr. Smith said. “So sometimes we feel obligated to work on something like lose weight, if that’s not going to be meaningful to you, don’t work on that.”
Another piece of advice she has is to know making the changes you set for yourself with your resolution may not be easy.
“It’s also important recognize from the start that it’s not going to be easy, you have to be patient,” Dr. Smith said. “It takes time to make these changes.”
As you look toward these resolutions, she said it can be easier to stick to your resolutions if you choose something specific, and limit what you want to work on in the new year.
“A lot of times we try to take on too much, we try to do an overhaul, that really sets us up for failure because we start to feel too much pressure, and we can’t keep up with that,” Dr. Smith said. “It’s really important to pick one major thing that we want to work on.”
“Some people will say, ‘well I want to be a better parent’, or ‘I want to be healthier.’ That’s great but they don’t really clarify what it is that that means,” Dr. Smith said.
“If you want to be healthier, does that mean you want to lose weight? Does that mean you want to eat healthier, what does that look like? So be specific, it might be something like ‘I want to spend 30 minutes a day with my kids without electronics.'”
Dr. Smith said by having a specific goal like that, you will know whether or not you’ve accomplished it.
