You booked that membership at the fancy HIIT gym in town. Start date: January 1st. Hopefully, the membership fees will motivate you to go regularly and fulfill your New Year’s resolution to get fit. Maybe you tried the same thing last year, but it didn’t last. Don’t worry — you’re not the only one. The reality is that keeping New Year’s resolutions is challenging for everyone. With all of life’s distractions, how do you keep your New Year’s resolution?
Like you, I’ve struggled to maintain my New Year’s resolutions and make realistic and meaningful ones. I did the same thing every day for many years, maintaining a mundane routine without achieving the highest satisfaction in my life.
That was until I found a priceless tool to help me find fulfillment: meditation. While my career used to lie exclusively in the investment and real estate fields, I now dedicate my time to teaching and coaching others like yourself about meditation and the path from stillness to success. I’ve helped hundreds of people use meditation to reach their goals. I published a book on the subject called “Get There: Charter Your Course to Financial Abundance and Live the Life You Desire.”
More and more people turn to stillness as a New Year’s Resolution. Today, I’ll help you understand why so many people have trouble keeping their resolutions. Then, I’ll teach you how stillness through meditation can help you keep New Year’s resolutions going strong through 2022 and beyond. Finally, I’ll share a fantastic resource to help you keep your New Year’s resolutions and find more happiness in life.
The Sad Reality of New Year’s Resolutions
People don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions for longer than a few weeks. We see this through membership statistics from gyms and fitness apps, corresponding to the most popular New Year’s resolution: to lose weight. Gym memberships and fitness app downloads spike in popularity on January 1st each year. The same goes for Google searches related to fitness.
Why is it hard to keep New Year’s resolutions? When do your goals for the New Year, gym-related or any others, start to dwindle? According to Business Insider — at around three months.
The truth is, less than 8% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions. But why is that?
Why People Don’t Keep Their New Year’s Resolutions
For so many people to abandon their resolutions each year, there must be a common denominator, right? Turns out, there are a few reasons people lack New Year’s resolution accountability. Here’s why people don’t stick to their resolutions:
1. Calendar Dates Don’t Spark Change
The idea of changing your life on a specific date is utopian. You won’t make lifestyle changes until you’re ready, and the pressure of doing so on a particular date won’t propel you towards a meaningful difference.
Change happens after five phases: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Without undergoing the first three phases involving thoughtful consideration of the pros and cons and steps necessary for change, you can’t expect to jump right into stage four with sustainable action.
2. We Don’t Pick Realistic Goals or Track Them
Losing 20 pounds is a big feat, yet it’s an example of one of the most common, unrealistic resolutions. Same with saving up thousands of dollars for a particular endeavor. If you pick an unachievable goal or one requiring a substantial time investment to reach, you’ll get discouraged and abandon your New Year’s resolution.
People pick New Year’s resolutions that are either completely unrealistic or too overwhelming to maintain. Of course, smaller goals within a larger goal could be a way to succeed, but it’s essential to track your progress to maintain accountability if that’s the case. Most people miss this vital step.
3. We Have Bad Habits
Doctor Nora Volkow describes bad habits as “hardwired into our brains.” Bad habits, especially ones that release dopamine, are tough to shake. For example, if you regularly spend money on expensive Starbucks drinks, you’ll crave the feeling of the reward you get after purchasing and consuming them.
As hard as it is to nix your daily Starbucks fix, on top of the task of creating a good habit, people must successfully break a bad habit to meet their New Year’s resolution, which takes time and discipline.
How do you make resolutions and keep them? What if I told you that one daily practice could help you overcome these barriers and fulfill your New Year’s resolutions?
3 Ways Stillness Helps with New Year’s Resolutions
What is stillness in life, and how does it relate to your goals? Stillness is the modern-day Nirvana, the state you find yourself in when you practice stillness consistently through meditation. We feel clear, self-aware, and connected with the universe in stillness. Stillness can lead to success in all facets of life, but you first have to build a foundation for stillness, which I teach you how to do here.
How do you practice stillness? Once you have a solid foundation, stillness will help you keep your New Year’s resolutions and all goals you set. Here’s how:
1. Stillness Creates Good Habits and Instills Discipline
Maintaining resolutions takes discipline and daily routine. Meditation is precisely that — a good habit — a consistent practice that brings you to stillness. Once you start meditation, you learn to create and maintain a new routine successfully. Take that repetition and discipline from meditation and apply it to your New Year’s resolutions.
2. It Encourages Self-Awareness
So many people wonder: How can I make my mind still? When’s the last time you sat in silence without the burden of racing thoughts? If you’re like me a few years back, probably never. With all of life’s obligations, worries, and stresses taking up space in your mind, it’s hard to know how to simply be. These distractions also muddy the waters that show us what we truly want in life.
When we meditate, our thoughts still race for a short time — this is normal. But the more you practice stillness, the easier it becomes to acknowledge your thoughts and then let them pass. Once they pass, you’ll feel still and see yourself more clearly. With that clarity, you’ll become more aware of your values, dreams, and goals.
Awareness will help you pick New Year’s resolutions that matter to you, which will be easier to achieve than ones created with pressure or tradition.
3. Stillness Teaches You to Reserve Space for Yourself
These days, we’re constantly distracted by work, people, and technology. It’s easy to make your personal growth and happiness a low priority on the ever-expanding list of things to do. Nothing makes me sadder than when people neglect their “me” time — you are worth holding space for, and you must protect that space.
Your time investments can hold you back from progress if you spend them frivolously. Once you achieve stillness through meditation, it’s easier to recognize what’s meaningful and what’s called “noise.” You’ll find the strength to eliminate the noise and create more time for yourself — your meditation, your goals, and that New Year’s resolution!
Keep Meaningful Resolutions This Year with Stillness
Bottom line, resolutions often don’t stick — but stillness can be a great tool to help you maintain them. How do you get inner stillness? Through meditation every day — a thoughtful, intentional space designed to shift your mindset, reset your patterns, and choose what you want out of life rather than let things happen to you.
I’ve seen countless clients in a similar spot, disappointed at how easy it was for them to fall off their goals. But I’ve also seen them overpower those patterns and, with my guidance, use stillness to maintain a healthier and happier lifestyle. I’ve coined this philosophy “Stillness to Success,” which is truly transformative.
So, are you ready to finally tackle your New Year’s resolutions with stillness? Sign up for my Stillness to Success course, and I’ll share tangible ways to achieve inner stillness — the best way to keep New Year’s resolutions!
Long-lasting change starts today.
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