“A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.” 🙂

Resolutions. A double-edged sword. While being an excellent motivator to help improve your life, they are often unreasonable and lead to disappointment when motivation to complete them is lost. Surprisingly, Dr. Tracy Bowers, a journalist on happiness for Forbes writes that making resolutions is important even if you don’t end up succeeding in them. For instance, resolutions improve optimism and “… optimism is doubly beneficial—contributing to your own mental health, but also engaging you toward positive action which has an effect on those around you.”

But even if failed resolutions carry some benefits, we would all like to have our resolutions work out. Fortunately, this is the perfect time to make tiny tweaks that refine your goals into achievable resolutions, as it’s been a month since you first made them. Here are three steps that make fulfilling your goals less of an uphill battle.

1: Reflect on what you are able to achieve now.

For instance, if your goal was to do 30 pushups per day, and you’ve only been doing 10, keeping a goal of 30 is not achievable. Making goals that have unattainable standards just sets you up for disappointment and discourages you from actually trying to work towards your goals. This also relates to making too many resolutions, as too many are counterproductive and divert your attention to many places at once, not allowing you to focus on completing any of them.

2: Think about things you have to change to make the resolution work.

Most people give up on their goals when they see that their current schedule won’t fit their resolution, thinking that it’s just not possible. Instead of making your resolution fit your schedule, make your schedule fit your resolution. Look for times in your schedule that you can tweak to better suit the areas you want to improve at. For example, if you like to spend 2 hours binging your favorite show, cut it down to 1, and exercise for the other hour. While this seems hard at first, forcing yourself to make these changes will further motivate you to continue working towards your goals.

3: Add motivators!

Motivation to complete your goals doesn’t have to solely come from you and can come in many forms. Make a group with friends who have the same goal and keep each other accountable. Start a journal that tracks your progress and/or have milestones that you will celebrate with whatever makes you happy (you definitely can’t go wrong with food). Remember you’re making these goals to improve yourself and if your resolutions are causing you to overstress, it’s always fine to drop them.