This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Illinois chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.
The New Year rolls around reviving your motivation, filling you with good intentions and uplifting your confidence. The last couple weeks of winter break feel like a whole new era of opportunity, but the stress of a new semester looms. It’s easy to quickly get overwhelmed with classes, homework, extracurriculars and a job and throw all your resolutions out the window. While this outcome might feel inevitable, making progress towards your New Year’s goals is possible with a little discipline and flexibility. Here are my tips for sticking to your resolutions as school starts back up again.
Baby Steps, Not Big Goals
Big resolutions feel a lot less intimidating if they’re broken down into small steps to work towards achieving them. Consider planning out a timeline to gradually integrate your resolutions into your daily life over the course of the year. Try slowly increasing the commitment level every month or every couple of months. This keeps your goals more realistic and will help you maintain consistency so that by the end of the year your once lofty New Year’s goals will be the norm in your life.
Treat Yourself
If you are a rewards-motivated person, consider throwing in a small reward in coordination with your incremental steps towards your overarching goal. For example, if your goal is to go to the gym more, get yourself a new workout set for each month you’re consistent. This can help give you a boost of motivation to stick to your resolutions and avoid losing sight of the end goal.
Track your progress
Being able to visually see your progress and commitment can be helpful to hold yourself accountable while keeping motivation to continue. Try to monitor your progress through a habit tracker app, a diary or even a chart. This can also be helpful to see if how you are balancing your course work and your New Year’s goals is working for you are not. Monitoring your progress can help you understand if you are actually making progress at the rate you intended to or not. Progress is not always linear, so tracking your progress can help you decide if you should keep or change your course of action and how.
Stay True to you
At the end of the day, you know yourself best and what will work for you. If a resolution that you originally wanted does not align with your goals a few months down the line, consider tweaking it or finding a new goal altogether. If your resolutions become more important than your school responsibilities, consider putting your resolutions on pause or slowing the pace of your progress. It is important that you stay flexible without feeling guilt when juggling school while attempting to make a major lifestyle change. Taking a step back from your resolutions is not failure. Always prioritize your happiness and wellbeing above anything else.