As you grow older, it can start to feel like you’re “too old” to improve your life through New Year’s resolutions. However, it’s never too late to make a change for the better—and letting yourself feel stuck is the worst thing you can do. In fact, having specific goals for the future can be hugely beneficial for healthy aging.
According to Dr. Mark Nathanson, who was interviewed by the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, having goals for the future is a sign of good mental health. A common sign of depression—a common health concern for older adults—is a hopeless or apathetic attitude towards the future; someone who is depressed might think that there’s no point in thinking about tomorrow, because it doesn’t matter. Having a future-oriented mindset and being able to look forward to something is crucial for maintaining your mental health.
While goal setting can be done at any time, the beginning of a new year can feel like the easiest time. When people want to set goals, they tend to start at a milestone of some kind—such as the first of the month, on their birthday, or at the start of a school year. Therefore, New Year’s Day can help to provide that extra little push that many feel they need. With that being said, many resolutions end up losing steam and petering out well before the end of the year; while the exact percentages vary by source, one study by the National Library of Medicine found that around half of all resolutions fail just within the first month of the New Year. While these statistics can sound disheartening, there are several strategies that you can use to improve your chances of success.
Tips and Tricks
When making your resolutions you may find yourself focusing on things that you want to stop doing. Whether it’s reducing bad habits, avoiding unhealthy foods, or quitting smoking, many people will naturally build goals centered on being avoidant or restrictive. However, multiple studies have shown that it is approach-oriented goals, rather than avoidance-oriented goals, that have the best results. One such study by the NLM found that participants with avoidant goals were only 47.1% likely to succeed, as opposed to the 58.9% success rate of those with approach-oriented goals. This means that you should try to focus less on what you want to avoid, and more on what actions you can take to reach your desired outcome. For example, if your goal is to eat healthy, you could try replacing unhealthy snacks with healthier alternatives, rather than trying to cut out unhealthy snacking altogether.
Alongside this, you should also try to make your goals as achievable as possible, which can be accomplished by following the SMART goal guidelines. SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, allows you to make manageable goals that are less likely to fail. In a guideline by the University of Utah, it is suggested that you ask yourself a series of questions when making your goals. These include questions like “Why am I doing this?” “How realistic is this for my lifestyle?” and “What can I learn from those who have achieved success in these areas?” Asking yourself these leading questions can help you to refine initial goals—which might be unclear or overwhelming—and set you on the right track with specific, attainable, and relevant goals.
SMART goals are also characterized by their time-bound and measurable nature. When workshopping your goals, it’s important to build in a method of tracking or measuring your progress, as well as a clear “due date” for their completion. While you may be tempted to set the due date as the start of the next year, science has shown that having far off end dates can increase procrastination—this is what dooms a lot of otherwise promising resolutions. Instead, try setting yourself interim goals with due dates spread throughout the year, with each smaller part adding to the larger overall goal. If your goal is to have a healthy, well balanced diet by the end of the year, you might set a smaller goal of eating one healthy meal a week by February, then a slightly larger goal of two good meals a week by April. This can prevent procrastination by making it harder to push your goals off “because you still have lots of time”.
Another excellent way of holding yourself accountable for your goals is to join forces with someone else. As an older adult, your social circle may be smaller than it once was. Nevertheless, chances are that you have a few close friends or family members who you could ask to help you to stay on track. This may even inspire them to make their own goals for the upcoming year! With your loved one, you can try setting up weekly, biweekly, or monthly sessions to check in on your progress together; along with preventing procrastination and increasing motivation, these sessions can be a great way to schedule routine social time together, providing bonding opportunities and improving your mental health.
Identify Your Own Resolutions
Now that you are an expert on goal setting, you can start the process of identifying and refining your own New Year’s resolutions. Right now, try grabbing a pencil and paper and brainstorming ideas for resolutions. These initial ones won’t be perfect, but they don’t have to be—the aim of this exercise is simply to get your initial thoughts out. So go ahead! Try that out now.
If you have come up with some ideas, you can now look for common themes. Perhaps your goals are mostly centered around getting more exercise, or eating better, or improving your sleep quality; perhaps you have no clear common themes at all. Whatever the case may be, try to pick or find goals or themes that are most important to you, and then expand on them using the SMART method mentioned earlier. This will help to set you up with solid, actionable goals which you can implement into your life.
For some of you, coming up with these goals may be tricky. Not to worry! The rest of this article will detail some common New Year’s resolution themes for older adults, as well as examples of SMART goals for each. These examples are simply there to help inspire you, and can be adapted or combined to fit your unique lifestyle—just make sure to keep them achievable and realistic!
Building a Healthy Exercise Routine
A common goal for older adults is to exercise more, and for good reason. According to the CDC, staying physically active has incredible mental and physical benefits, in both the short term and the long term. Most notably for older adults, physical activity can reduce the risks of 8 different cancers, improve bone strength, and reduce the risks of falls through improving balance and coordination. It can also improve brain and heart health, lower blood pressure, and reduce symptoms of several mental health conditions including depression and anxiety. Those with chronic pain and cognitive decline can also benefit from regular exercise.
Exercising more is a great resolution because it can be done in so many ways. As an older adult, you may experience various physical limitations which can make standard exercises such as running or biking very challenging. Fortunately, exercise can also mean walking, dancing, seated exercises, yoga, tai chi, and a whole range of other low-impact activities which provide the same benefits while being easier on your body. If you are able to do higher intensity activities, you can also do that instead! The trick is to find a method of movement which feels good for you.
Once you have found this method, the next step is to create an actionable goal with a clear indicator of success. This might mean doing a specific exercise for 10 measurable minutes of the day, at an achievable intensity, targeting relevant muscles, with time-bound increases in duration—for example, going from 10 minutes to 15 minutes per day by the end of April. Again, this will be different for everybody, and you will likely have to change some of the specifics before this goal will work for you. Stick to the SMART guidelines, and you should have no trouble in tweaking it to your needs.
Boosting Your Diet
Another common resolution is simply to “eat healthier”. As an older adult, your diet matters more than ever, as you now need less calories than you did in your youth, but still require the same amount of nutrients. As a result, eating nutrient-dense foods while limiting nutrient-poor snacks and controlling your portion sizes is essential.
According to the official Dietary Guidelines for Americans, your meals as an older adult should consist of mostly nutrient-dense foods including “vegetables, fruits, whole grains, seafood, eggs, beans, (…) unsalted nuts and seeds, fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and lean meats”. These foods should be prepared with little to no added sugars, saturated fats, and sodium to ensure optimal nutrient density while keeping your caloric intake within the target range. As an older adult, you also need more of specific nutrients. In particular, getting enough protein is essential, as it can reduce the loss of muscle mass.
To make your healthy eating resolution, try to first think about your current diet. What kinds of foods are you eating? Are you getting enough protein? Do you find yourself snacking mindlessly throughout the day? These kinds of questions can help you to identify potential areas for growth. For those of you looking to improve the intake of a particular nutrient, such as protein, your SMART goal might look like eating more foods from a specific list (such as lean meats, soy products, eggs, or other protein-rich foods), measuring your progress with a habit tracker, starting with an achievable goal of one protein-rich meal per week, thereby targeting a nutrient relevant to your health. The time-bound aspect could include upping your protein intake by increasing the frequency of your nutrient-rich meals over the span of a few months, or focusing on including a new healthy food into your diet each month. Again, the goal is to find a target that works for you and adjust your SMART goal to fit your lifestyle!
Improving Your Social Life
In the aforementioned interview by the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Mark Nathanson shared that the one resolution he hoped every older adult would make was to “have some companionship”. As more research emerges on the negative effects of social isolation, it has become increasingly clear that being cut off from human connection is detrimental to both your physical and mental health. This is especially true for older adults, who are most likely to experience social isolation.
Because of this, in order to preserve your quality of life, it’s important to find ways to stay social. To start, try examining your goals for your social life—are you looking to reconnect with old friends, or meet new people? Do you want to have long and thoughtful talks, or do you want smaller, more frequent outings? Identifying your personal style of socializing can help to create guidelines to follow in the next few steps.
Once you have identified your general goals, you should start thinking about actionable ways to make them happen. If you are looking to reconnect with current friends, your goal could be to call three specific friends for at least 15 measurable minutes, at an achievable frequency (perhaps once a week) in order to deepen these relevant social connections. As with the other goals mentioned above, the time-bound aspect can vary; it might look like increasing the duration or frequency of your calls each month, or increasing the number of friends you call from 3 friends to 5 by February. As long as you are finding ways to set interim goals for yourself, anything goes!
If your goal is to meet new people, you might try joining a new volunteering initiative each month, or attending a book club meeting. You could start by visiting a local community center to look for volunteer postings, or by searching online using a platform like Meetup. From there, use the SMART guidelines to build yourself an actionable plan!
Bettering Your Overall Lifestyle
If your goals are not strictly confined to one particular thing, like exercising or socializing, you may simply be looking to improve your overall lifestyle. If that is the case, there are several methods you can use to try and approach this challenge.
First, you might try focusing on replacing bad habits. As mentioned earlier, resolutions centered around avoidance have higher failure rates; instead of trying to quit through willpower alone, try to think of good habits that you can use to replace or reduce bad habits. An actionable resolution might look like replacing a specific habit, like drinking alcohol, with a better habit like drinking water. This could be measured by the amount of alcohol you have replaced—for example, you could try keeping a running tally of the number of drinks you have replaced with water. By doing this in an achievable way (like replacing one drink per week to start) you will be able to see relevant results, and be able to make time-bound progress by moving on to two drinks per week, then three, and so on.
Simply building new healthy habits can also be a great resolution. For older adults, some ideas for beneficial habits include meditation, regular creative time, and dedicating time to learning new things. Learning new things in particular has been proven to improve cognitive function and prevent dementia! Try picking a relevant, specific skill to learn each month, and dedicate 5 ~ 15 minutes a day to this skill. By keeping the duration short to start, you’ll be able to keep your goals achievable, and make sure you stay on track. Interim goals could be to increase the duration of your learning from 5 minutes to 10 after a month, and then move on to 15, 20, or 30 minutes after that.
Cleaning or organizing your environment can also be a great habit. If you have documents that you need to get in order, like a will, you can make completing it your big goal for the year. Try spending 10 minutes a day on it, and measure your progress through interim goals spaced throughout the year.
Final Remarks
No matter your age, New Year’s resolutions can be a powerful tool to improve your life. By using the SMART method and choosing goals that are right for you, you’ll be able to set yourself on track. Remember, no one is perfect, and setbacks are a natural part of change! Try not to get frustrated with yourself, and instead focus on what you can do to make your resolutions easier for yourself. And, as a final note, don’t be afraid to reward yourself when you’ve done something well! Intermittent rewards can help to keep you motivated throughout the whole year.
