New Year’s is a time when many people make resolutions to do better, achieve goals, make progress, change behaviours, start new hobbies, and live a more fulfilling life. Motivation for change begins high at the start of the year, however over time motivation to fulfil the resolutions generally decreases, and many resolutions are abandoned.
Importance of Values When Creating Resolutions
Values are a desired global quality of ongoing action in our lives, they are statements about how you want to behave and what matters to you, and they can are important in both big and small decisions in our lives. By identifying your values, and which require focus for the upcoming year, you are able to set overarching global qualities to your behaviour, helping guide each decision, and giving you a direction to take when setbacks to your goals occur. With values identified you are able to set specific resolutions that are in line with your values to notice and measure your compliance with your values.
Consider this example. I have set a resolution for myself to run a marathon in the new year, but in February I sprain my ankle, and then in May I start a new job which clashes with my training time, June I go on holidays and July comes and I am unable to finish the marathon. I will be upset, having been unable to complete my New Year’s resolution, and tell myself I will try again next year.
Now consider this example if I had identified first that my values of focus for the year are fitness, self-care, and persistence. The same series of setbacks may occur, but I can also identify smaller ways I have acted in line with these values, having persisted to nurse my ankle back to health, having found time to walk instead of run when I started my new job, looking after myself by taking a holiday, and persisting in attempting the marathon. I am likely to come away with an overall happier mindset on my behaviours, and am able to pivot and identify more small and big decisions in line with my values of the year.
How to Create Meaningful Resolutions
If you want to set truly achievable New Year’s resolutions follow the steps below to identify your values, and some values based resolutions for your New Year.
Identify your values. Try and identify approximately five values that you want to prioritise focusing on this year. To help identify your values there is many tools online, just as there are hundreds of different values. Have a look at this resource
Create your values-based resolutions. Based on the values identified before, set some resolutions that are connected to your values.
- Immediate resolutions, something small, simple, easy, I can do it in the next 24 hours.
- Short term resolutions, things I can do over the next few days and weeks.
- Medium term resolutions, things I can do over the next few weeks and months.
- Long term resolutions, things I can do over the few months and years.
Lastly, remember to keep your values and resolutions handy, print them out, save them to your photos, set a reminder for when you expect to achieve your specific resolutions, set a calendar event in your phone to review your values and resolutions periodically throughout the year.
