Tips for Wellness Resolutions That Stick This Year
Rethinking How We Approach Resolutions
Nowadays, there are a million self-help books geared towards teens and women with “wellness” in the tagline. They advertise clean diets, specific exercise routines, natural bedtime supplements, and complex mindfulness practices that will boost your metabolism, help you focus, and make you more energetic.
We all want to eat right, sleep right, exercise, and be more mindful. We make New Year's resolutions year after year to do cardio four times a week and keep a gratitude journal. But that’s not enough to make those goals part of your routine. And then we feel even worse about ourselves because we don’t make the progress we want. Rinse and repeat, year after year.
I’m neurodivergent and have a neurodivergent husband, family members, and friends. Here are four reasons I’ve noticed we struggle with New Year's Resolutions – and changing our behavior in general – and solutions that have worked for me.
We need to think in terms of habits, not goals. Writing New Year’s Resolutions helps us get in touch with what we want for ourselves. But lasting change comes from becoming the person who regularly does what we put in our resolutions. That comes from habits. James Clear, author of the research-based book Atomic Habits, defines habits as “the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day.” Habits influence “the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.”
We need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timebound). Neurodivergent individuals do best with concrete goals and an accountability mechanism that provides a sense of accomplishment. Choose a concrete action, a frequency and specific time, and a reminder and habit tracker. Use one you usually have on you, check frequently, and it isn’t overwhelming. Maybe that’s an app on your phone, tablet, laptop, a physical planner, a separate piece of paper in a binder, or a combination. Just as with every tool, the best system is the one that works for you. I recommend keeping the complete statement easily visible as a reminder of the reason behind the action when it feels hard to follow through.
We need to make habits for multiple elements of wellness. Wellness has five pillars that all work together to make us feel our best: nutrition and hydration, exercise, sleep, mindfulness, and social connection. Making a single habit for these five increases a sense of accomplishment because a) we’re less overwhelmed when our “to-do” list is shorter, and b) if we struggle more with one habit, we’ll likely do better with another.
We need to be excited about doing our new habit. In all areas of our lives, if we set a goal to do something “good” for us but doesn’t excite us, it likely won’t happen. You’re not setting yourself up for success if you commit to jogging four days a week, even though you don’t like jogging, because you know cardio is important and you’ve heard it’s the best form. Instead, try making habits for each of the 5 Life Zones you look forward to incorporating into your everyday routine. You get the same benefits from doing Latin Dance on Apple Fitness Plus, so if that sounds more fun, make that your new habit.
Thinking in Terms of Habits
You can write habits in three simple steps (adapted from Atomic Habits). Because I need to practice what I preach, I’ll walk you through how I created my mindfulness habit for this year, using the above four ingredients as an example.
Decide who you want to be this year. You’ve likely already done this as your New Year’s Resolution. I want to have more self-compassion and tell myself the same things I’d say to a friend in the same situation.
Decide what small changes will help you become that person and make a concrete, realistic plan to incorporate them into your day-to-day routine. Mindfulness helps me be more compassionate toward myself. I do best when mixing it up with different guided and moving meditations. But I’m busy, so I’d like to keep meditation sessions to 10 minutes, give myself a day off, and plan sessions daily. I also want to go to yoga once a month and schedule it during my monthly planning sessions. I’ve created a recurring reminder on my phone to remind myself to meditate.
Here is where it gets a little trickier. To successfully follow through with your plan, challenge the messages you tell yourself that have held you back. You are the person you want to be. Instead of telling myself I am not someone who actively works on having more self-compassion, I try to remind myself I am.
Here is my final written habit: I work towards having more self-compassion, so I consistently practice mindfulness in the following ways and keep track of my progress with phone reminders.
I practice different forms of meditation six out of seven days a week for ten minutes and schedule the time during my daily planning sessions. I alternate between guided mindfulness, self-compassion, walking, and tapping.
I attend yoga classes once a month and schedule them during my monthly planning sessions.
Habits take commitment, and it takes a long time to see results. And just like anything else you do daily, sometimes you’ll forget. Meditating every day has been a habit of mine for years, and I still skip some days. Something unexpected may happen like your boss scheduling a weekly meeting when you usually go for a walk, that causes you to change how you incorporate the habit into your everyday life. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong or that you're a failure.
Conclusion
Try creating wellness habits and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised when the positive change lasts well behind January.