We’re so close to the end of the year we can almost touch it – and if you’re looking forward to a fresh start, you may be ready to make your New Year’s Resolutions for 2025. Maybe you make them every year and knock them out of the park. Maybe you make them every year and give up by Springtime.
And maybe this year you want to make resolutions you can keep, and ideally, improve your life.
That’s the whole idea, right?
At Crownview Psychiatric Institute, our mission is to provide the highest quality support for people with complex, hard-to-treat mental health disorders. That’s our resolution every year. In 2025 we resolve to advance our work, expand our reach, and offer effective, lifechanging mental health treatment for patients who need it most.
We shared ours – and we’re 100 percent certain we’ll stick with it for the entire year. Now we’ll offer pointers on how you can make a New Year’s Resolution that helps – and lasts all year.
Making Effective New Year’s Resolutions: The Longer They Stick, the More They Help
A paper published recently identifies the two most common types of resolutions people make, and shows which type has the greatest chance of success, and which has the least. Resolutions most often fall into these two categories:
- Resolutions that start with “I will…” Researchers describe these as approach oriented.
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- Among people that made “I will…” resolutions, almost 60% kept them for over a year.
- Resolutions that start with “I won’t…” Researchers describe these as avoidance oriented.
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- Among people that made “I won’t…” resolutions, fewer than 50% kept them for over a year.
Those distinctions and outcomes make perfect sense.
Why?
We think “I will…” statements contain a good mix of optimism, hope, and expansion. Whereas “I won’t…” statements contain a mix of limitations and restrictions. Between those two, we favor hope and optimism. In our work, we see the power of hope and belief every day and know it’s an essential component of long-term healing and growth.
Now, with this idea in mind, we’ll share our top five tips on how to make effective New Year’s Resolutions in 2025.
How to Make New Year’s Resolutions That Last
1. Your resolutions need to be SMART.
Here’s what that means:
- Specific: vague resolutions often fail, while clearly identified resolutions have a greater chance of success
- Measurable: an objective measure of progress can help keep you on track
- Achievable: your resolutions should be ambitious, but not out-of-reach. If you’re unsure whether you’re overreaching or in the right ballpark, check in with a trusted friend, family member, or your psychiatrist/counselor/therapist.
- Relevant: when your resolutions mean something to you, you have a greater likelihood of keeping them.
- Timed: this one is easy for resolutions because the time is the entire year. However, if you create milestones along the way to gauge progress – monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly, for instance – you can see your progress and/or make adjustments as needed.
2. You Need to Personalize Them.
This idea is partially covered by the “A” and “R” in SMART. But there’s more: when you make your resolutions, make them based on your vision of the life you want. Think about what makes you happy and what gives you a sense of fulfillment. But most importantly, think about what will best support your mental health recovery journey. When you know exactly what you want and have a plan to achieve it, your chances of success increase dramatically.
3. Remember Practical Factors.
Some resolutions mean you have to change structural components of your life. For instance, you may need alter your daily routine, find new places to buy groceries or eat out, or change your sleep schedule. Consider those things ahead of time. If you resolve to improve your eating habits, you won’t want to wake up that first Monday in January to a kitchen full of processed foods. Fill it with goodness ahead of time so you can hit the ground running.
4. You Can Recruit Friends.
Success loves company. When you have a team behind you, it makes a difference. Call them peers, call them accountability partners, call them whatever you like. But whatever you do, call them. Start now: ask friends if they’ve made resolutions. If they have, ask them if they’d like to team up and support one another throughout the year. This works for a variety of reasons, but we’ll focus on the positive: you’ll have someone who’ll celebrate every successful step you take right along with you.
5. You Should Expect Challenges.
You know from experience life rarely goes exactly as planned. The same is true for your resolutions. Things will come up during the year that put them in jeopardy. Stress at work might make you eat sweets when you’re trying to avoid. Bad weather might keep you from taking walks or going jogging. Traffic might delay you on the way to a class or a social event. When these things happen – because they will – we encourage you to keep things in perspective. One day eating sweets doesn’t have to derail your resolution to improve your eating habits, and one missed workout doesn’t have to disrupt your fitness goals. When life events interrupt your plans, you can adapt, get back to your plan as soon as possible, and chalk it up as a little bump in the road.
Here’s a secret: you can use these tips for any goal you make in life. They’re not exclusive to New Year’s Resolutions, but they will help you keep them if you make them.
Now we’ll switch gears and share several sets of facts and figures about New Year’s Resolutions. We’ll share the most popular resolutions for the past two years, report on how well people kept their resolutions in 2024, and close with the most popular resolutions people plan for 2025.
What Kind of New Year’s Resolutions Did People Make Last Year?
Here are the most popular resolutions people made in 2024:
Top Five Resolutions for 2024
- 48%: get more exercise
- 38%: improve financial situation
- 36%: take care of their mental health
- 34%: lose weight
- 32%: eat healthier
For perspective, here are the most popular resolutions people made in 2023:
Top Five Resolutions for 2023
- 52%: get more exercise
- 50%: eat healthier
- 40%: lose weight
- 39%: save money
- 37%: spend more time with family and friends
New Year’s Resolutions: Did People Keep Them in 2024?
From our perspective, New Year’s Resolutions are a mixture of funny, sad, and hopeful. They’re funny and hopeful for the same reason: we keep making them, year after year, despite the fact that everyone knows the odds aren’t ever in our favor. And they’re sad because we want people to meet their goals, and each abandoned resolution mean things didn’t go the way they wanted.
In 2024, researchers and statisticians at YouGov.com conducted a poll about a third of the way into the year to assess the success rate of New Year’s Resolutions?
Why so early in the year?
Because – and this aligns with what we say above – most people drop their resolutions by then. In fact, attrition is so common and rapid, people call the second Friday in January Quitter’s Day. Anecdotally, that’s the day most people give up on their resolutions, if they haven’t already. And objectively, data shows that around 9 percent of people keep their resolutions all year long, with over 85 percent of people dropping them within four months.
Therefore, the end of March is a reasonable date to assess success rates for New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s what the researchers from YouGov found:
New Year’s Resolutions in 2024: Outcomes
- 18% kept them entirely
- 51% kept them mostly
- 22% were confident they’d keep entirely them the rest of the year
- 49% thought they’d keep them mostly for the rest of the year
- 2% think they’ll give up on them entirely
In 2025, we want you to be among that group – close to 70 percent – of people who either kept their resolutions entirely or kept them mostly. If you follow our five tips above, we know you can do it, whatever challenges come your way.
What Are the Most Common Resolutions for 2025?
For 2025, we have survey data for one category of New Year’s Resolution: finances. Scores of articles and sources suggest resolutions, but no source has published survey data – yet. Therefore, we’ll offer the financial survey data, published here, and then report on what types of resolutions health and wellness experts advocate for 2025.
2025: Top Financial Resolutions
- 54% plan to improve their financial situation
- 42% plan to save more money overall
- 35% plan to earn more and spend less
- 27% plan to improve their credit score
- 26% plan to start an emergency savings fund
Now we’ll share the top ten types of resolutions people make each year. If you want to make a resolution but aren’t sure what to resolve, consult this next list. Millions of people around the country make resolutions every year. The ten categories on the list below are the most common: we’re sure you’ll find an area to focus on – and improve – in 2025.
2025: Top Ten Types of Resolutions
- Health and Fitness
- Personal Development
- Career Development
- Financial Development (see above)
- Relationships and Social Life
- Individual Wellbeing
- Mental Health
- Ongoing Education
- Travel
- Online Wellness/Digital Habits
No matter what you choose, or whether you actually stick with your resolution or let it go, please remember that the process is as important as the outcome. It may be more important than the outcome. What matters is that you engage in an ongoing journey of self-improvement and that along the way, you learn more about yourself. That’s true for every resolution we list, even the financial ones: every day is an opportunity to learn, and apply that new knowledge to what comes next.
We wish you – and your resolutions – all the luck in the world.
Happy New Year from Crownview Psychiatric Institute!
Gianna Melendez
Jodie Dahl, CpHT