How to Not Give Up on Your New Year's Resolution by February

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It’s that time of year. The time that people lose their motivation for those new year's goals they set a few weeks ago. Almost half of people quit their goals by the end of January.

Emotions are coordinated responses across all of your body’s systems. They change how you think, how you behave, and your physiology. Emotion captures your attention and focuses you. It can be the difference between feeling energized to achieve your new year's resolution and a goal that slowly fades.

4 Ways Emotions Can Keep You Going

1. Emotions signal your goal progress. You feel emotion when you are succeeding or failing at a goal. That means that you have to have a very clear idea or image of what the goal looks like. The more clear and more visual you can make a goal, the more powerful the emotions it will evoke. Wanting to be healthier is probably not going to get you there. Wanting to improve your flexibility so that you can play with your kids or lose weight so you look great on the beach can get you there. Making a picture of what that would look like could be even better.

2. Emotions happen when you care. Goals you never think about are not going to evoke emotion. Emotions happen when you care about a goal in the present moment, and compare your actions to that goal. Sitting on the couch munching chips meets a goal of pleasurable relaxation. But if your goal of a healthier you is present in that moment, your behavior will be compared to that new goal. There are lots of ways to make goals present – pictures, physical reminder, prompts from an app.

3. Emotions happen when you focus. We all get distracted and sometimes set a lot of goals. The more goals you set, the less likely any one of them is to be salient, or psychologically present, at any point in time. Focusing on one goal at a time keeps that goal salient and capable of evoking emotion.

4. Emotions can be amplified. Sharing success and failure with other people can make emotion more powerful. This could be sharing your progress with a friend, posting online, or any other way to let others know how you’re doing on your goal. It amplifies the happiness you feel when you’re progressing, which can keep you motivated for when things are hard.

Using emotion to energize your new year's resolution can motivate focus and achievement. Research on emotion suggests their power can be focused by setting clear and compelling goals, keeping the goal present, focusing on one goal, and sharing successes and failures.

Goals that have these qualities evoke emotions. As you succeed in moving toward the goal, you’ll feel happiness and excitement that will motivate you to keep going. If the goal starts to fail or something gets in your way, it will evoke anxiety and anger. These emotions will orient you back to the goal and re-focus your efforts on attaining it.

Change is hard and uncomfortable. Using the power of your emotions can motivate you through the change to achieve your new year's resolution.