Tips to change your resolutions into results

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Q: After a hard year and a half I was feeling pretty good about next year. Work is OK and my friends and I had some great plans to ring in the new year. We all needed a lift, so we had planned on a quick trip to Mexico over the holidays. Then one of our group of seven became quite ill with COVID. We cancelled our trip so that we could help take care of his partner and young son. None of us have any local family to rely on so we look out for each other. The extra time together also gave us the chance to talk about our new year’s resolutions. We’ve all made them before, especially financial ones, but we don’t usually stick with them long enough to make them matter. What can we do this year to be more successful with our financial resolutions? ~Eddie

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A: The start of any new year is a time when many people decide to try something new to improve their life. Living a healthier lifestyle, losing weight, getting more sleep, learning a new skill, or managing money better are all popular new year’s resolutions. Following through and changing your resolutions into results can, however, be hard on the motivation muscle, especially once the January hype and pressure wears off. Working at something new takes more effort than doing what we’ve always done, so it’s no wonder that after a month or two of doing our best to stick with our new plans that our motivation weakens.

New year’s resolutions come with a heavy dose of guilt when we fail to live up to the expectations we set for ourselves, which can add to the reasons why we fail. The trick is to frame your resolutions in a way that, right from the start, sets you up to be successful. Life happens — it always does. When deciding how to make resolutions stick, have a contingency plan for your own weaknesses and for the unexpected.

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Here are three tips to keep in mind that will help you outsmart yourself:

Create a ‘do not do’ list instead of a ‘to do’ list

When we make resolutions, we tend to resolve to do certain things. Eat more vegetables. Exercise 30 minutes every day. Pay an extra $100 to our credit cards each month. Sound familiar?

These are all pretty typical resolutions, and therein lies the problem. For instance, to cover your plate by at least 50 per cent with vegetables at every meal takes a lot of effort. From shopping for the produce, to preparing and cooking it, if your plan doesn’t include all of the steps it takes to allow yourself to achieve success, you’ll quickly get discouraged.

To exercise 30 minutes each day might even require your spouse’s commitment to your goal so that child-care duties or household commitments can be shuffled a little to accommodate the minimum three-and-a-half hours each week that you’d need to spend on making your resolution a reality. Adjustments can of course be made, but if you don’t plan them in right from the start, you might unfairly beat yourself up for failing at your goal.

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If your goal is to pay extra money to your credit cards, where will the money come from? Will you spend less, work more, or do a bit of each? All three options require planning, and if you have a partner, making your plans together would be wise.

Resolving to do something can sometimes be harder than resolving not to do something. Think of Dry January; those who participate choose not to drink alcohol for the month of January. The rules are simple — don’t drink alcohol for 31 days. Very little preparation is needed and the rules are clear.

Consider the resolutions you made for 2022 and decide if you’ve given yourself a fair chance at success. Maybe not eating potatoes, pasta, or rice at each meal is a simpler way to help yourself fill your plate with more vegetables. Cancelling a subscription might save you the money you need more easily than working an extra shift each week. Be creative as you consider the flip side of what you’re resolving to do because what not to do is often as important as what you need to do.

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Why You Don’t Want to Make Financial Resolutions for New Year’s

Avoid repeating past mistakes

Making resolutions with friends or family can be a big help when it comes to staying motivated and getting through a rough patch. And if you’re at all competitive and struggle with having failed at a goal last year, you might set the same goal this year hoping for better results.

However, this logic can put you at a disadvantage. Your past lack of success might have impacted your belief in yourself that you can indeed succeed. To overcome these feelings of failure, you’ll need a few successes under your belt first.

Before setting the same goal you set in the past, think about what you need to do differently this time so that you don’t repeat your past mistakes. Ask yourself:

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● What steps do I need to take if I set the same goal again?

● Did anything work last time that I should do again?

● What should I avoid doing because it didn’t work last time?

● What got in the way of achieving this goal last time?

Jot answers to these questions down so that you can look back at them when the going gets tough. It can help to keep a journal as you tackle the goal so that you can reflect in more meaningful ways. And give yourself permission to change how you work on the goal, or even the goal itself it need be. The definition of insanity is often summed up as doing the same things over and over while expecting different results. Don’t drive yourself to the brink — do things differently and realize success this year instead.

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How to Set Goals You Can Actually Keep

Stick with making one resolution

Have you ever walked through a home improvement or hobby store only to get to the till with more supplies and projects in mind than you can reasonably accomplish in the time you have? It’s easy to get carried away, and the same can happen with new year’s resolutions. Making resolutions is easy and can even be addictive. But just like shopping for project supplies, the planning is often easier than the execution.

Don’t underestimate how hard it is to make changes in your life. We are creatures of habit and feel comfortable with what is familiar to us. When it comes to making lasting change in our lives, small changes over a longer period of time tend to be easier to stick with than tipping the apple cart and starting over.

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Help yourself achieve success with your resolutions by only making one. Keep it simple and avoid getting overwhelmed. One resolution is easy to remember and won’t spread your efforts out too thin. Furthermore, most meaningful resolutions require several steps.

For example, if despite rising costs, your resolution is to keep your grocery spending to no more than about $300 per person in your household each month, you will need to comparison shop, be savvy with your shopping lists and strategies, meal plan, look for frugal yet tasty recipes (maybe even learn how to cook them), as well as organize your food storage system to achieve your one goal successfully. All of the things you need to do to support the success of this one goal could be resolutions themselves.

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Change is a process that takes time, so aim for success with one resolution. If you’re trying to shake a bad habit, it likely took years for it to develop. Eliminating it in one month is unrealistic. By sticking with what you can reasonably achieve you will set yourself up for success. Not only does success feel better than the alternative, it will motivate you to achieve more of it.

The 4 Key Steps to Take When Implementing Change

The bottom line on achieving financial goals

All is not lost if you set goals and don’t succeed. The simple exercise of setting a goal and doing what you can for even a few weeks to try to achieve it is often enough to foster some degree of change in your behaviour. This can be especially true of financial goals because any debt you did manage to pay off, or money you did manage to save, is still progress you can fall back on. If it takes longer than you had anticipated to achieve your goal, that’s the great thing about your goals — they are yours. You call the shots. There’s no race to the finish line. It’s about the journey and setting yourself up for long term well-being and financial stability.

Related reading:

4 New Year’s Resolutions to Make When Facing an Uncertain Future

Changing Resolutions to Debt-Free Solutions

Is It Better to Pay Off Debt or Save Money?

Scott Hannah is president of the Credit Counselling Society, a non-profit organization. For more information about managing your money or debt, contact Scott by email , check nomoredebts.org or call 1-888-527-8999.