Are you one of those rare people that actually achieve your New Years resolutions? WELL DONE! You're in a tiny percentile of people who stay the course.

So where's the problem? Obviously its not with us, rather the tradition itself. We tend to set unrealistic goals, thinking we can make immediate wholesale changes, then fail spectacularly! Then most of us put the resolutions aside and our behaviour the remains the same as pre-resolution.

Contrary to popular belief, there are ways to achieve your News Years Resolutions.

Let’s look at the word RESOLUTION. It’s a demanding word, screaming “I MUST!” with no room for failure, yet it’s probable that we will fail. We don’t really respond well to imperatives.

We are simply being unrealistic about our resolutions.

Think about some of your possible past resolutions e.g. “I’m going to lose 25 kilos in 6 weeks” or “I’m going to stop smoking and drinking alcohol”. Are you seeing a pattern here? These are quite frankly unrealistic, which is why we fail.

Successful behavioural change comes only in stages. Understanding your own behavioural change is critical to the success of your mission. If you are someone who is an ‘all or nothing’ person, determination will see you through, but if you're like most of us, then we need to do this one step at a time.

1. Be realistic – set achievable goals, e.g. don’t deny or deprive yourself by saying “I’m never going to eat chocolate again”, rather say “I’m only going to eat chocolate once a week”. That's doable.
2. Forward planning – I always say to my clients, if a weight loss programme is required, the key to success lies in the planning of menus, and planning the shopping. Also mentally preparing for the changes ahead and making sure you are ready for this.
3. Reward yourself – e.g. if you're stopping smoking then set milestones such as first day, first week, first month etc. A good idea would be to save every cent you would otherwise have spent on cigarettes. Do this for a minimum of a year and you'll be amazed at how much you will have saved.
4. Monitor your progress. Little short term goals are waaaaaaay easier to achieve than HUGE unattainable goals. e.g. weight loss; instead of focusing on losing 25 kilos in total, rather focus on losing 1 kilo at a time, using a journal to keep on track.
5. Perseverance – you're implementing a HUGE behavioural change and persistence pays off. Experts say about 21 days are required to make a new behaviour to become a habit and about 6 months to make it stick and become a normal part of the NEW you.