One good thing about the impending apocalypse: never again will you have to deal with the internal humiliation of breaking your New Year’s resolution by 5th January (or anything else, for that matter). Sadly, all signs point to Earth surviving the absolutely non-existent cataclysm; so while the schadenfreude of watching Steve from accounts be reduced to his component atoms won’t be yours, you’ll at least get to celebrate Christmas. With this totally unexpected survival in mind, we present the following guide to keeping your resolutions in a post(non)-apocalyptic world:
Think Small
The trick is to take things incrementally. You want to lose weight? Fine, but don’t expect a personality change to happen simultaneously. If you usually find it a chore bending over to recover an errant chip from beneath the sofa, you won’t become a gym-monkey with the power of resolution. The world doesn’t work like that: if you’re one of the lucky few to have such iron willpower, chances are you don’t need to lose weight in the first place.
It’s all about minor modifications that will add up over time. You might know you’ll crash and burn your gym membership, but how about promising yourself you’ll walk to work? Twice a week: that’s a start. Wednesday and Friday morning; every other day you’ll park your cushty ass on the bus like everyone else. Find a handful of positive tweaks you can make to your life and go from there. Jump in the deep end and you’ll find yourself lying undressed in bed, shoving twixes into your gaping maw before January is out.
Identify Bad Habits
What is it about ‘you’ that you dislike? Seriously, sit down and have a think. The temptation here is to just answer with ‘I’m a fat pig and nobody likes me’, or ‘I work for pennies writing self-help guides for the internet’, but such porcine wallowing isn’t going to get you anywhere. Find the tiny things, those little habits you have that make you sad. ‘Overeating’ doesn’t help; it’s too big for the brain to comprehend rationally. ‘Snacking’ is getting closer, but when do you snack? ‘While bored at work’, ‘when watching TV’; now you’re onto something. Focus in on these details, identify when you have a snacking problem and what causes it, and try to eliminate just one. Apply the above step: Make a super-simple resolution like ‘I won’t eat while the TV is on’ and stick to just that. In this way, identify your five worst habits (again, nothing general), then try and cross two off the list. Just two, nothing more; we’ll worry about the others later.
Give it Time
Wow, look at you: it’s already March and you’re still walking to work twice a week. You haven’t eaten in front of the TV for two months and you’re probably feeling pretty pleased with yourself. Until you glance in the mirror and see you look exactly the same. Then the old, familiar disappointment sets in.
Now, you have two choices. You can give up and go back to eating whole trifles during the advert breaks on X-Factor; or you can chill out and realise these things take time. You’ve stuck to your resolution so far: good for you. Seriously, you’ve done well. Now it’s time to step it up a bit.
First, increase your current goals. Not much. A manageable amount. You’ll walk to work three times a week and eliminate one other snacking time from your routine. Then, go back to that list of habits again and isolate an aspect of the third you’re ready to cut down. Set your alarm ten minutes earlier, or start going for a quick walk two evenings a week instead of watching Top Gear repeats. Apply the above steps. Think small, make it incremental and take it slowly. Keep this up till the end of April and you can think about adding something else.
Keep at it
Make manageable differences, and persevere. As a year goes by the changes will stack up and, roll round January, you’ll be the only person you’ll know who stuck to their resolution long-term. What a great feeling, eh?
Attached Images:
-  License: Creative Commons image source
-  License: Creative Commons image source
-  License: Creative Commons image source
This entirely less-than-serious guide was written for us by Thorpe Breaks in the UK; official hotel and accommodation provider for Thorpe Park. What strategies will you be using to stick to your resolutions?