Top 10 tips for making New Year Resolutions

What are your New Year Resolutions for 2016? What are your reflections from 2015? Many of my patients have shared their grand New Year Resolutions for 2015  and have told me that they have only achieve a few. Some of my patients feel like failures and I have to reassure them that they are not alone. Like many people in the world, I also have a habit of making New Year Resolutions towards the end of every year. To be honest, I didn’t achieve all of my goals either. After many meditations and reflections, I have found 10 tips that worked for me. These ideas resonates with most of my patients and they have encouraged me to share, so here they are and I hope they resonate with you in some levels. Happy 2016 to you!!!

  1. Make the New Year Resolutions for YOURSELF: Often we do things  to make people around us happier, in my own example, I wanted to make my family and friends proud so many of my past New Year Resolutions were to achieve things to please them. Later on I realised that they love me regardless of what I have or haven’t done in life.
  2. Know YOUR reasons for making the changes and BE THE CHANGE: This is the best way to stay motivated. We all have moments that we just don’t have the energy and lack motivation. That’s life. I believe that this will keep us going and it is the very reason many of my patients are doing better in their diabetes self-management.
  3. Imagine and visualise how YOU will feel when you’ve achieved your goals: Many of my patients enjoy imaging how much better they feel when they freedom of spending more time with their family members, especially their grandchildren. It is possible so let’s do it!
  4. Draw your own MAP for each of your journey towards each goal: Most of my patients love the fact I empower them to take full control of their health and help them map out what and how they can do to regain their health to the best possible results.
  5. Be REALISTIC and take SMALL ACHIEVABLE STEPS toward each goal: Ask anyone who’s climbed Mt Everest, they will tell you it takes a step at a time to get to the summit of Mt Everest with lots of preparations. Some of my patients had unreal ideas of losing 10% of their bodyweight in a month and only to be disappointed and discouraged. Lifestyle modification will work with your determination! Go slow and steady and you will get there!
  6. Give yourself a  REALISTIC TIMELINE for each goal: Most of the patients who achieved their desired health outcomes had a timeline on when they want to get certain results with realistic expectation.
  7. CELEBRATE and REWARD yourself for each little wins: I’ve always encouraged my patients to see how well they’ve done by keeping a diary. I believing in celebrating and rewarding with each little improvement as it motivates us to keep working towards the desired outcomes!
  8. Enjoy the journey towards each goal: Life is full of ups and downs so the best we can do is to enjoy the journey and do our best to reach our goals. When we have fun, we do better and go further!
  9. It’s okay to make ADJUSTMENTS along the way: Years of experience as a health professional has taught me there are many ways of achieving goals so if one thing doesn’t work, we can always make adjustments in order to reach our goals.
  10. BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT: It’s your life and you are in control of what you can or cannot do is my favourite saying to all my patients! Most of my patients gave themselves too little credit and I’ve always encouraged them to believe that they are the ones with the power to improve their health with support from their doctors and health professionals.
Viv Hsu
Follow me
Latest posts by Viv Hsu (see all)
Post Tagged with , ,

Leave a Reply

Categories