Making your New Year’s Resolutions Stick

It’s a new year, which means that people are already making (and possibly breaking) their New Year’s resolutions. A useful article on Time.com takes advice from addiction experts on how to make your resolutions stick. What are the main points?

-Be honest with yourself about what you’re doing. If you’re trying to moderate your drinking and every time you plan to have 2 drinks, you end up having 5, then this should signal to you that your drinking may be more problematic than you’re acknowledging.

-Start out by trying to temporarily go cold turkey. For example, if your ultimate goal is to drink less, it might be easier to stop completely for a designated period of time rather than trying to taper off.

-Think before you act. Expect to get urges or cravings for whatever you’re trying to change. When you feel an urge, try to delay acting on it immediately. Try to reflect on the craving and think about the trigger. This may enable you to resist it better. The more you practice resisting or delaying giving in to cravings, the easier it will become.

-Give yourself a break. Be positive in your approach. Rewarding yourself for making a small change is far more effective than punishing yourself for not being able to do it. In fact, learning to tolerate imperfection in yourself may be the most useful change of all.

-Try to surround yourself with people who are doing what you want to be doing. It’s hard to stop smoking when you are only around smokers or to drink less when you mainly hang out in bars. It can be tough to change friends or to change the way you socialize, but it will make it easier for you to achieve your goals.

A last point (and this part is from me, not Time.com) is that change can be very hard. We all know what is good for us--eating right, exercising regularly, and not smoking, for example. Yet it can be very difficult to give up something that we know is not in our best interests. Be honest with yourself about what payoff you get from this habit you are trying to break. If you can’t acknowledge what you like about it--what it does for you, or the loss you will feel if you do give it up--it will be more challenging to achieve the change you want.