Resolution Stats and Tips

While many of us think it's silly to make resolutions for the New Year, there's research that shows it does make a difference.

Stats
1. 40 to 45% of American adult make one or more resolutions each year.
2. People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don't explicitly make resolutions.
3. Resolvers reported higher rates of success than nonresolvers; at six months, 46% of the resolvers were continuously successful compared to 4% of the nonresolvers.

I think sometimes we can get carried away with all the things we want to resolve in a given year. Here's some of the tips I've found to be most useful in my journey of resolve.

Tips
1. Make only one goal. Changing only one behavior is less overwhelming than two or three or four. By the end of the year it might just be mastered. Then the following year move onto something else while keeping pace with the previous years' behavior change.
2. Ignore pessimists. Exclude contact (as much as possible) with people that tend to tear down the possibility of success.
3. Be surrounded by support. Replace pessimists with supporters. Maybe someone at the gym, a co-worker with similar health interests or just someone that isn't threatened by success.
4. Write it down. I best like the form Johnna found from a Hallmark magazine.
5. Designate Rewards.Each month that I'm successful with my "sweet eat" goal I'm going to put $25 aside. At the end of the year if I'm successful that will go towards a six hour spa day for Mandy. I'm really looking foward to this!
6. Visualize Success. I'm already picturing myself without the crutch of sweets in my daily life. I like the way it looks. I'm picturing more energy, feeling better about myself and having a grip on food versus the other way around.

If you've decided to work towards something for 2009, I'd like to hear about it. Comment or email me (froehlich.mandy@gmail.com) and tell me about it!