Tips for forming habits, making lifestyle changes in the new year

LITTLE ROCK — A new year often involves resolutions to improve health, form a new habit or change one’s behavior. To better achieve these changes, Brittney Schrick, extension associate professor and family life specialist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, recommends setting SMART goals by ensuring they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-sensitive.
ne of the biggest barriers people face when trying to form a new habit is “expecting to be perfect right out of the gate,” Schrick said.
“Often, if we ‘fail’ at something, we give up,” she said. “What is lost here is the idea that practice is necessary. It can’t be an all-or-nothing attitude, and that tends to be how we approach New Year’s resolutions. Give yourself some grace and give yourself the opportunity to start over multiple times.”
Schrick said that when making a change, it doesn’t need to happen on a Monday, or at the first of the month or calendar year. It can be at any time, on any day. “You can just decide, ‘I need to recommit to that,’” she said.
Setting SMART goals
Schrick recommends making SMART goals: those that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-sensitive.
Specific and Measurable: “Your goal can’t just be something like, ‘I need to get healthier,’” Schrick said. “That’s not particularly helpful. But if you narrow it down to ‘I want to eat more vegetables, so I will try to eat them at two meals every day,’ then that is concise enough for you to easily keep track.”
Attainable: Schrick said people should set goals that aren’t grand or unrealistic. “It needs to be something that can actually be achieved,” Schrick said. “If you have never run in your entire life, but you say, ‘This summer, I’m going to run a marathon,’ you might be able to do it, but you’re probably setting yourself up for failure. But you’re more likely to get to a 5k race by the summer.”
Relevant: Finding a true motivation that makes sense within one’s own life and desires is important to progressing toward a goal. “It needs to be something that you actually want to achieve,” Schrick said. “There has to be some motivating factor that isn’t just, ‘I want to look better in a swimsuit by the summer’ or ‘My mother told me I need to get healthier.’ It needs to be something personally relevant to you.”
Time-sensitive: The goal needs to have an end point or built-in deadline, where it is either achieved or it isn’t. “It can be your goal to meet it every day,” Schrick said. “It doesn’t have to be something far in the future. If your goal is to eat two servings of vegetables every day, but you don’t hit it one day, that doesn’t mean you have to stop. You can just try again tomorrow.”

Think outside the body
Though physical health tends to be the focus of many New Year’s resolutions, Schrick said it is helpful to consider other kinds of changes that can benefit mental and emotional health.
“While improving our physical health is a worthy goal, a lot of the time, what ends up happening is that we move on from them when we don’t see results as quickly as we should,” Schrick said.
Setting a goal to read more books, make more of an effort to reach out to friends, or spend more time outside are all changes that can feel good from the inside out.
“I also like the idea of changing our mindsets about things,” Schrick said. “Deciding to be nicer to yourself, or speak more kindly to yourself in your head, can go a long way. Try to catch your negative thoughts before they spiral into being mean to yourself.
those words can have a huge impact, which you might not notice the benefits of until it comes in handy,” she said. “It might be months down the line of you practicing this before you notice, ‘Oh wow, my first thought wasn’t a bad one this time.’ That can be a really useful thing to do.”
Deciding to tidy up one’s living space more regularly can also have a big impact on mental health, and Schrick said it is good practice for forming a new habit in general. This is also a helpful goal to set as a family, and it can be tracked using a chore chart or other visual progress indicators.
“Talk with your children about how you all share this space, so you’re going to share the labor it takes to keep your space clean,” Schrick said. “Maybe you have a shared incentive for completing it. ‘If we can keep the house tidy and cross off all of our goals this week, then we can order pizza on Friday night’ — whatever works for your family.
“Just having those shared goals, and that visual tracker, helps you hold each other accountable for making sure things get done,” Schrick said.
For more information and resources about family life, visit the Cooperative Extension Service’s Personal and Family Well-Being page.