As we all know, New Year’s just passed and with it comes the inevitable shouts and proclamations of new year’s resolutions. New year’s resolutions are one of the biggest traditions about the passing of the previous into the current. Your friends make them. Your family makes them. There are a thousand articles and blogs talking about resolutions, and what kind of resolutions to make and how to make them.

And people do make them! They stick to them for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. But then many people inevitably fall off the revolution wagon and go back to their old lives. There has to be a better way, right?

What if we didn’t make revolutions anymore? What if, instead, we changed the way we look at change? It’s possible that we would have a lot more success if we didn’t focus on the resolution part as much, and if we instead focused more on the want to change. What is it about change that makes us feel like we have to wait for a big event to spur on the change we want to see in ourselves?

Most of the resolutions are things that we’ve wanted to do for a long time, so why do we think that making new year’s resolutions will make us more likely to do them? If we were to take the things that we wanted to do, and do them for ourselves instead of because of a resolution, I think we would have a greater percentage of success.

One of the worst things one could do when trying something new is to quit the old thing cold turkey. Instead, it would be more productive to tackle things in steps, work up to the big goals in order to be able to accomplish them.

If you’ve never been to the gym before, or haven’t been in a long long time, don’t vow to go twice every single day. That’s not sustainable and you will get burnt out before you can make any changes to yourself.

If you don’t like or eat vegetables, don’t vow to go vegetarian in order to lose weight/eat healthier. If you don’t like them, you won’t eat them and your vegetarian lifestyle will consist of pasta and bread alone. Start by having one serving of vegetables a day, or by going meatless just one day a week.

If you don’t know how to save money, don’t try to do it without help. Take a class, google ideas, have some of your paycheck go straight into your savings where you won’t touch it.

It’s better to work up to your goals instead of running right towards them. Build a steadier foundation to base your new habits on, and you’ll find that you will have more success than if you had just jumped and hoped for the best!