Every New Year’s Eve—or on the first day of the year, if you’re the laidback kind—people tend to go through a ritual. It usually involves making a promise, a commitment, or as we better know it, a resolution. You might be making it just to yourself or announcing it to your friends and family—or social media now, letting all your followers know about the new journey you’re taking up. But aloud or not, we all make resolutions every year. That’s a given.
What’s also a given is that, often, our resolutions are so far off, so extreme that we end up giving up on them soon. This can happen a week later, a month later (February each year sees a huge number of broken resolutions after all), or any time during the year for any reason your particular case might be related to. But more often than not, the reason behind these broken resolutions is the basic fact that we overestimate our commitment and underestimate the difficulty and value of what we are setting out to do.
For example, in 2018, at 30 years old and 59 kilos, I resolved to lose weight and get back to the way I was when I was 25 years old (52 kilos). It didn’t seem like a huge leap, losing seven kilos isn’t that difficult a job after all. But what I didn’t know when I made that commitment and set out to eat right and exercise a hell of a lot more was that I had an autoimmune condition and a reproductive health condition which make losing weight the conventional way more difficult. I didn’t shed that weight, naturally. And the realisation that I had set out to do something simple enough and failed at it was quite crushing.
This episode helped me realise that we often set ourselves up for this type of experience by, firstly, not knowing ourselves (physically, mentally, biologically and financially) well enough, secondly, by expecting to make a sudden change without setting up systems of support, and thirdly, by assuming that not sticking to a resolution indicates that we have failed. To be honest, breaking a resolution is not a failure. It’s a life lesson. And no matter what your age, you can take away from that lesson and learn to set realistic resolutions to start afresh—resolutions that are meant for your actual wellbeing.
How To Set A Realistic Goal
It is a fact backed by science that behavioural changes are some of the most difficult ones to achieve, especially if you are an adult. A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine explains that “simply setting a goal seldom leads to actual behaviour change.” Instead, what you need to be doing is breaking up the goal-setting into two key components that make it more realistic and achievable:
Consideration of goal characteristics: If you have a goal you want to achieve, first consider what its characteristics are. Is it an approach goal that can help you move towards the desired outcome, or an avoidance goal that helps you move away from undesired outcomes? Is it a performance goal that judges and evaluates your abilities (and can set you up to perceive setbacks as failures), or is it a mastery goal that can help you increase your existing abilities and help you learn new skills? Is your goal so difficult that you can achieve it only by performing at least a miracle a day, or is it one that is broken down into achievable steps that ultimately lead to a big, desirable outcome? Asking these questions is important, because psychologically speaking, having approach goals that focus on mastery through easy, achievable steps is much healthier for you in the long run.
Action planning: Rome was not built in a day, and you cannot achieve your resolutions or goals by simply clapping your hands or turning a switch on. A realistic goal requires proper action planning. And while most of us think we can plan these actions completely by ourselves, the fact is that we need expert advice to do so. We might be able to visualise our goals, imagine ourselves as thinner or richer or more popular than before, but it’s only an expert who can help you chalk out the steps you need to take to be able to achieve this goal. This expert can be a doctor or trainer, a financial advisor, a nutritionist or a mental health professional or a therapist—but you need their assistance, and you need to accept this.
Realistic, Achievable Goals For 2022
So now that you know what realistic goal-setting looks like, here are a few practical resolutions you can take—and more importantly, achieve—in 2022.
Focus On Health, Not Weight Loss
Weight is not just a number that floats in a vacuum. It depends on health factors which are physical, biological, psychological, and often hereditary too. By setting yourself a weight loss goal, you might not do yourself any justice at all. Instead, by not taking parameters that actually affect your health and lead to weight gain into account, you could do your health more harm than good by taking up a fad or extreme weight loss diet. So, commit to knowing your medical history, addressing stress factors and other health issues that are at the root of the weight gain. Once you resolve to address these issues, you’ll be healthier and weight loss, if it has to happen, will happen. And if at the end of it all you are healthier but not thinner, that’s okay too.
Make Better Financial Commitments
We all have financial goals or dreams that can only come true with more savings. But that’s the operating word here…savings. Not loans, taking more credit and building up on those EMIs without building up a fund that helps you see through emergencies and retirement. The problem is, many of us know where we want to be financially, but don’t know how to go about it. It is for this reason that you need to have a financial advisor who can guide you properly, or at least a digital planner that can do complex analyses for you to help improve your finances. This could be done through an app like Her Circle, or through a financial advisor you know. You should also check out our financial checklist to help you set your goals in 2022.
Prioritise A Work-Life Balance
If there’s a lesson we have all learned in 2020 and 2021, it’s that work-life balance matters a lot more than we imagined before. So, in 2022, focus on setting the right boundaries for yourself, your family and your workplace so that you have a good work-life balance. The goal here should be to lead as stress-free a life as feasible. For this, don’t set up avoidance goals like taking up less challenging projects at work or putting less of an effort at home. Instead, take up approach goals at home like cooking a dish with your kids every night or helping them with one subject’s homework every day. Similar approach goals at work could include setting SMART goals, delegating properly and keeping expectations from outcomes stable.
Send Happy Vibes To Get Some In Return
Have you seen those reels on Instagram where people just go around complimenting others on the road, stores, etc. and get joyful, heartfelt responses in return? That’s what sending positive, happy vibes looks like. We have all had a tough couple of years, and we all need some empowering, pampering and uplifting. Each one of us, whether we work virtually or are commuting to work every day, touch many lives every day. If you send some positive vibes across, chances are that you will get them in return, and might get that little boost that turns your day from “meh!” to “wow!”. No, you don’t need to scream compliments at random strangers to do this. You can just do this by sending a text or sharing a funny meme with a friend, cracking up your colleague with a joke, or simply giving your partner a bear hug at the end of the day.
Resolve To Never Hit The Snooze Button
Procrastination is the bane of everything good in the world, and often the main reason why, no matter what your individual goals, we give up on our resolutions. One of the biggest methods of postponing things every day is by hitting that snooze button when your alarm goes off every morning. This could be followed by a day full of “I’ll do this later”, or “I’ll get to this tomorrow”. Don’t do that to yourself. Set a time to do a certain thing and do it right then instead of hitting the snooze button on life. This might seem like a very small step, but trust me, it has a very positive, cumulative effect.