By the time February hits, the rush for reinventing oneself in light of the new year has often died down. Sustaining the journey to a picture-perfect life feels more like a chore than the invigorating dream it was once intended to be.
Even those still hanging on to resolutions face a daily battle to keep their new goals alive. However, it’s still early in the year and there’s plenty of time to take those first steps forward — starting with rekindling those abandoned resolutions.
Pave Your Path
There are many paths to success; resolutions are about enhancing one’s life, not taking on additional burdens. “New year, new me” doesn’t have to mean waking up at the crack of dawn if you absolutely detest mornings. Staying active can mean indulging in relaxing daily walks rather than immediately jumping into a gym membership; language learning can be watching shows in a foreign language rather than the traditional pen-and-paper method of learning. You know yourself, so tailor your goals to be achievable, as resolutions are much more likely to stick when they’re made authentically realistic and enjoyable.
Game-ify Your Goals
If the inherently slow journey of goal-achieving fails to inspire activity, create an adrenaline-packed game out of it. To celebrate 2025, make a bingo card with 25 experiences to complete this year. Boxes can present simple goals, like attending a concert or learning a new skill, or more ambitious ones, such as hitting that $3000 savings goal by the end of the year. The thrill of scrambling to get boxes crossed off could be the necessary push to make those long, sought-after changes. For more short-term aspirations, an easy-to-make online wheel spinner with a task on each sliver could send you on a new journey every week (or month). This gives every week its own goal to fulfill and breaks up the daunting one-year timeline of resolutions into manageable chunks. Getting friends in on the fun and adding a competitive edge or incentives to each activity is another tempting approach to bring some amusement into self-improvement.
Track Trends
With some resolutions, like getting into shape or eating healthy, progress may not be immediately detectable. This is where documentation makes a difference. Writing down sets and repetitions in a notebook or in the notes app makes it easy to see otherwise discrete growth. The same goes for media, where a quick log into Goodreads or Letterboxd memorializes the moment in which a commitment was honored. Over time you’ll be able to stitch all these photos and statistics together to make a cute scrapbook or album celebrating personal success. Not only does documentation provide accountability, but also opens new avenues of appreciation and nostalgia down the road.
Above all, give yourself grace. Not every day is going to be a success and that shouldn’t be the expectation. Progress is not linear, but rather a series of ups and downs that take patience, time, and consistency. Keep putting in the work, because little by little it will all come together.
