With 2019 come and gone, many people want to focus on the year ahead. Perhaps you have made a list of things you would like to change or improve that you felt you lacked a year ago. If so, you are not alone. Eighty percent of people fail to keep or achieve their resolutions before spring. Moreover, studies show that less than 25% of people stay committed to a goal after the first month, with only 8% of people actually accomplishing what they set out to do. This is all sounding a bit bleak now, right? So this leaves us with the question, how can you stick to your resolution? Or more importantly, why are the dropout rates so high?

While the reasons vary from person to person, these are some common reasons why resolutions fail.

The first reason may be that your goals are not realistic. Maybe you are an ambitious person and you set yourself high goals- which can be fine from time to time. However, over shoot the mark and you’re setting yourself up to fail; if your goal is to become an astronaut within a month, and you aren’t already about to finish training, you give yourself no chance. . Set goals, you are likely to achieve and aim to improve next year.

Are your goals specific? The first step in setting SMART goals is to make sure that you are specific. Avoid creating yourself vague objectives, such as lose weight. Aim for ‘I would like to lose X amount of weight by X month’. Uncertainty only creates room for indifference, confusion and distance between your goals and aspirations. Try to make your goals relevant to what you actually want too.

If not all, most goals require some sort of change. However, not everyone is ready to make such changes – even the positive ones.If you’re setting new goals for yourself, chances are you’re hungry for some level of change, but it is really important to make sure you are in a stable enough position in life to have the energy to push through the challenge the change will bring. Evaluating where you are in life could mean you’re not setting the right goals and you need to adjust them.

A lot of this will come down to your mind-set.

Think about only setting two or three resolutions, and break it down to manageable steps. Remember it doesn’t all need to happen at once. Also, take the time to think about what sticking to each particular resolution will do for you, and perhaps others. It is fine and healthy to accept that you might slip along the way, but try hard not to take them as failures. Re-evaluate and adjust your goalposts. And most importantly, make resolutions that will make you happy!