If you’re one of the millions of people planning to make a promise to improve yourself this New Year, the odds are against your success, but there is a growing amount of smart strategies to stay committed to your goals. There is also some interesting data about the type of new year’s resolutions that people in the U.S. are focused upon.
A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that 55 percent of resolutions were health-related, such as exercising more, or eating healthier. About 20 percent were focused on getting out of debt.
Health and organization the top goals
If you’re still deciding on personal goals for the new year, you can take some inspiration from the most popular Google searches for self-improvement. According to the data pulled from Google by iQuanti, these are the most popular New Year’s resolutions:
• Get healthy: 62,776,640 searches, a 13.77 percent increase over last year during the same time period.
• Get organized: 33,230,420 searches, dipping by 7.41 percent compared to last year.
• Live life to the fullest: 18,970,210, spiking by 13.04 percent from last year.
• Learn new hobbies: 17,438,670 searches, up 4.72 percent from last year’s total.
• Spend less/Save more: 15,905,290 searches, up 17.47 percent.
• Travel: 5,964,130 searches, down by 0.82 percent.
• Read more: 4,746,560 searches, down 5.63 percent from last year.
That fact that getting healthy tops the list is no surprise — it’s long been the most common New Year’s resolutions. But this year, people are specifically interested in gym fitness, rather than simply improving their health. There was a 315 percent increase around the search term ‘gym’ and a significant increase around fitness-related searches.
Tips for New Year’s resolutions in 2019
There’s a reason the same resolutions appear every year. Overall, people are not successful in realizing their goals. Research shows that only about 8 percent of people actually achieve their New Year’s goals. With a 92 percent failure rate, there is a great need for advice on how to keep your resolutions.
Recent studies have found that people believe that both enjoyment and importance are significant factors in whether they stick to their resolutions. In fact, the researchers found that the enjoyment factor was the only thing that mattered. In other words, if the participants were getting immediate rewards from their new habits, they would be more likely to stay committed to them. This central motivation was most often linked to goals related to health and to body image.
Consider these tips to keep your health-related resolutions:
• Get away from the instant-gratification mentality and avoid unrealistic goals. Don’t expect to go from average to perfect in just a few months.
• Establish good habits! Establish new and good habits – it takes about 28 days to set a new habit. Once you train your mind with good habits, achieving your goals becomes much easier.
• What you should expect from your “labor of love. ”Frequency, intensity and time – these are the three investments you’ll need for losing weight or gaining muscle. Exercise at least 30 minutes three times a week.
• Solidify the gains with persistent positive reinforcement. Learn to reward yourself in a new way by paying attention to the gains in your body. Notice the improvement in stress levels, breathing, energy, sex life, mood and overall strength.