It’s “New Year—new me” season, and we’ve got a whole list of resolutions that we’ll probably break before January is over.
Ofc, ideally we’d be able to keep up a new habit for longer than a month (or in some cases, a day), but the way many of us go about our resolutions doesn’t set us up for success. Going all-in or cutting things out cold turkey can be overwhelming and unsustainable.
If your resolution is to start doing something, you want to cut it down until it becomes small enough to tackle. Start by cutting whatever your resolution is in half. If that still sounds like too much, cut it in half again. And again. And again. Until it feels so easy to do that you basically have no excuses.
Start there. Then gradually work your way up to your goal.
For example, say your resolution is to read for an hour before bed instead of spending that time watching TV or scrolling on her phone. So to start, you’d cut that down to 30 minutes, then to 15 minutes. It’s way less intimidating to start reading for just 15 minutes before bed.
If your resolution is to do something less, you essentially reverse engineer the process. So, if your goal is to spend less time watching TV, you’d halve the amount of time you currently spend watching TV. Get comfy there, then cut it in half again, and continue to do this until you get to where you want to be.
This method can help build positive habits that are sustainable, building momentum through smaller successes to motivate us onwards.
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