Sticking to a New Year’s Resolution is possible if you go into it with the right mindset and set yourself up for success.
Dr. James O’Dea, the senior vice president of the Hartford Healthcare Behavioral Health Network, said he recommends you start by making a simple goal.
“People sometimes have these really grandiose ideas about how they're going to transform their life. It's really hard to make big, big changes in one fell swoop. So, I think the first thing is keep it simple and be realistic,” said Dr. O’Dea.
Dr. O’Dea then recommends you say it out loud, tell someone and enlist their support to hold you accountable because you are far more likely to be successful that way.
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And lastly, Dr. O’Dea said he tells his patients often that you can’t define your life by what you’re not going to do.
“Defining your life by what you're not doing works for like three days. After that, you really have to begin to say, I'm going to do this instead. So instead of ‘I'm not going to stop at the Mobil station and grab chips on my way home from work, I'm going to make sure that I have oranges and apples on the way home.’
He suggests you set goals based on what you are going to do and focus on those small changes to help you stick with your goals in the New Year.
