New Year’s resolutions alternative: New Month’s (and New Week’s) resolutions

[Back to 5 more effective alternatives to New Year’s resolutions]

If you’re like most people, New Year’s resolutions are a yearly well-intentioned but ultimately pointless ritual. You run with a full head of steam into the new year, fully committed to change for the better. But by the end of January, phhhttt – the air goes out of those tires.

One of the biggest reasons those resolutions don’t work is that we front load all our effort and intention to start the year off with a bang, and then expect that to sustain the change for the duration.

When we front load our change efforts, we often get an initial rush of inspiration and determination, followed by months at sea in the doldrums with no wind in our sails to keep that change going. We’re left to drift and hope the momentum of that initial launch is enough.

Chunk it down with New Month’s resolutions

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions this year, how about a different approach: New Month’s resolutions.

Rather than aiming for one big bang of positive change at the start of the year, give yourself the opportunity for change over and over and over. You could take a variety of approaches to making your New Month’s resolutions:

The build-a-goal approach

That might be a series of resolutions that build towards a larger goal. For example, if you want to have healthier habits, your January resolution might be to exercise at least three times a week, your February resolution might be to continue exercising while cutting out sugar, and March might involve continuing to build on those while eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables.

The sampler platter approach

Or it might be a series of unrelated resolutions each month, giving you the stimulation of working towards something new. If even a percentage of those stick, you will have made more positive change than the average person who makes a resolution January first that fails by the end of the month.

The repetition repetition repetition approach

In this approach, you make the same resolution each month. This gives you twelve opportunities to build on it, rather than limiting yourself to one big hurrah (and then likely fizzle) at the beginning of the year. If you are doing well with it, this gives you the opportunity to reward and reinforce your efforts. If you have fallen off track, it gives you the opportunity to get back up on the horse and start riding again.

But wait! There’s more!

Finally, you’ll gain two more benefits from taking a more granular approach to change in the coming year: eliminating that New Year’s change overwhelm and giving yourself more opportunities for reinforcement.

Give overwhelm the heave-ho

When it comes to positive New Year’s change, it’s common for our eyes to be bigger than our stomachs (figuratively speaking). We see the potential for positive change, and then go overboard on committing to this change, and this change, and this change, and…

The result is that we bite off more than we can chew. And all those aspirations to make this year better than the last go straight out the window till next New Year’s.

When you take a more granular approach, you can still commit to those changes, but you’re able to spread them out over time, increasing both your ability to focus on each one and the likelihood that you will succeed.

Reinforcement wins

Speaking of success, one last benefit to taking a New Month’s / New Week’s resolution approach is that you have many more opportunities to experience it. And each experience of success can both fuel and reinforce further efforts for growth and change.

Not only does it give you more chances to feel successful in your ability to make positive changes, it also gives you more opportunities to celebrate those successes (a key piece of the puzzle in reinforcing both your belief in your continued success and your motivation to keep going).

Make 52 New Week’s Resolutions

While you’re chunking it down, why not take it even farther with 52 New Week’s resolutions?

You could do this in conjunction with the New Month’s resolutions idea (breaking those resolutions into weekly chunks that support them). This gives even more potential for frequent reinforcement, as well as smaller periods of time for you to wander off track unchecked.

It’s also a great way to treat the coming year as a sampler platter for positive change. You can dip your toe in a wide variety of positive changes. When you find one that feels good, just keep doing it, while continuing to play with other weekly resolutions.

The bottom line

The bottom line to all of this is that significant change seldom happens in one fell swoop. It grows over time. Relying on the wave of a magic wand at the beginning of the year to do the heavy lifting for creating change that sticks is a recipe for failure.

But when you chunk it down and pursue multiple resolutions over the course of the year, it’s easier to stay on track, keep focused, reinforce your success, and renew your efforts on a regular basis.

And that’s how change happens.

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