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Tips to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution

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December 20, 2011

Every year it becomes a cliche to make a New Year’s Resolution in December and then end up breaking it two weeks into the new year. Most of our resolutions come as the result of a drunken statement right before the clock strikes the midnight hour on New Year’s Eve. While our intentions are good, Psychology Today reports that 22 percent of resolutions fail after a week and 40 percent fail after a month.

While this is a nice way to think about the holiday, the only thing that actually changes is the number on the calender. New Years is not a magical cure for what ails us. Instead, we need to find the proper motivation and determination to better ourselves in the long run. Instead of taking to the traditional methods to stick to your resolution, you should consider getting introspective and finding alternative solutions to help quell your vices.

Losing Weight

The number one New Year’s Resolution for people in America is to lose weight. Throughout the month of January, you will see gym memberships start to increase and the sale of health foods go through the roof. Sometime in February these trends cease and everything goes back to normal. If you are serious about losing weight, you should get a head start on everyone else and join a gym in November when enrollment rates are the cheapest.

You should also take a look around you to analyze your conditions. If you are around a group of people who eat non-stop, you might find it is normal to do the same. If you announce plans to change your habits, they might try to dissuade you. An article on CNN points out that in order to fight this peer pressure, you should not tell anyone you are trying to lose weight.

Saving Money

There is a good chance that the holiday season has left you very broke. Purchasing gifts, new dresses and accessories, and planning meals can take a lot out of your paycheck if you don’t receive a Christmas bonus. With banks starting to charge more for checking accounts, it is a good time to look into better rates and terms for all of your banking needs. Chase Freedom and other banks offer big bonus incentives to customers who choose to switch over services during the new year.

Quitting Smoking

Along with ads purporting weight loss drugs, fitness centers, and diet foods, you are guaranteed to see the airwaves jammed with ads dedicated to the latest nicotine patches, gums, and pills. The New Year should be a good time to look and see what the triggers to your smoking are. You could be going to bars too often where alcohol makes you want to smoke, you could be stuck in a terrible job with stress levels that get relieved by smoking, or you could just be a creature of habit.

The Center for Disease Control outlines some helpful tips on their website for combating the smoking addiction. It will be a hard process and take a lot of willpower, but if you have the motivation to fight the addiction there are people who want to help.

Keeping your New Years resolution will not only make you a better person, it will give you the willpower and motivation to do a lot things you might have once considered unobtainable. Nothing will get you what you want in life faster than determination and the will to succeed.

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