Don’t shoot yourself in the foot to start the new year. Let’s change the way we view new year’s resolutions and also the way we make them.

We’ve all been there; set a resolution to lose weight or quit smoking and by the first fortnight in January we’ve fallen off the wagon and giving yourself a good old guilt trip for it.

New Year's resolutions can be harmful if they are set in an unrealistic way, or if they are not accompanied by strategies to help you achieve them: 

Unrealistic goals can lead to anxiety, depression, and issues with self-image. 

Resolutions that are set in a win-or-lose mentality can lead to feelings of failure if you don't achieve them. 

Resolutions set for tradition's sake may lack motivation. 

Without strategies to help you achieve your goals, you're less likely to succeed. 

You might make resolutions when you're relaxed and surrounded by friends and family, but temptations are always available. 

Some tips for making resolutions that are more effective include:

• Set S.M.A.R.T. goals: Goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. 
• Break goals into smaller chunks: Set challenging but measured goals to motivate yourself and celebrate small wins. 
• Identify obstacles: Create plans to avoid obstacles and reduce the chance of failure. 
• Hold yourself accountable: Write down your goals and find a way to be accountable to someone else to help you achieve them. 

It takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit, but the range can be from 18 to 254 days. The time it takes to form a habit depends on the person, the behavior, and the circumstances. 

• Consistent repetition: Consistent daily repetition is the biggest factor in forming a habit. 
• Tracking progress: Tracking your progress can help you change your behavior over time. For example, you can use a mobile app to record your steps if you want to increase the number of steps you take each day. 
• Replacing an old habit: Instead of going cold turkey, it's more effective to replace or adjust small parts of an old habit. For example, if you always have a glass of alcohol at 6 PM, you can keep the time and glassware but replace the alcohol with soda. 
• Writing down goals: Writing down goals can increase completion rates by 42 per cent. 
• Having an accountability person: Having an accountability person can increase success by 70 per cent. 
• Being reminded of a new habit: Being reminded of a new habit can lead to 12 per cent more completed goals. 

Progress is never linear.

People can sometimes become a little obsessed with their progress, crumbing when they reach a plateau or can no longer see the progress.

You need to trust the progress, as it is there.

We all envision change as, “When I reach this goal, I will be happy,” or imagining and predicting the result will happen at a certain date, and will become despondent when it does not happen.

We all need to remember life isn’t like that.

Growth does not happen overnight, and once we hit that finish line we have in our heads, does not meant the growth is going to be there forever.

We never stop learning and we never stop growing. This is why instead of resolving to lose 30kg by July, or to just get healthier, we should make specific changes to incorporate this into a lifestyle change.

The ‘let’s get healthier’ resolution could have many different subheadings;

*Jan 1 – starting aiming to drink more water every day. Go for a walk around the block every day.

You can no doubt see what I am driving at; start small and work up. 

• Visualising and imagining your goals can make you twice as confident in achieving them. 
• Only 31 percent of those who don’t visualise feel confident about achieving their goals, as opposed to 59 percent of those who visualise.
• A study by Forbes found that people who vividly describe their goals in written form are 1.2 or 1.4 more likely to be successful than those who don’t.
• A study by the Journal of Applied psychology states that presenting weekly progress reports of your goal increases your success rate by 40 percent.
• 14 percent of people with goals are 10 times more successful than those without goals. 
• People have a 65 percent chance of reaching a goal if they have an accountability partner.
• In 90 percent of the studies, challenging and specific goals resulted in better performance than easy goals, no goals, or “do your best” goals.
• 35 percent of all people cannot accomplish their goals set during New Year’s Resolution because of unrealistic goals.
• Over 1,000 studies show that setting high goals results in better task performance, motivation, and persistence compared to vague goals.

Research suggests that 92 percent of people who set goals fail to achieve them. So give it a good hard crack, and use these tips to set apart this New Year's as the one where you got through without the obligatory guilt over a resolution gone awry.