As the New Year begins, if you’re like many people, you’re contemplating the past and the present; the old and the new. How do you want to be? What do you want to achieve this year? What’s important? These reflections may lead to musings, whether they be New Year’s resolutions, “new year, new me intentions,” or simply acknowledging that you have a new start at the new year. It’s easier to be rife with enthusiasm at the beginning of the new year. The new year activates blank slate fantasies, and it can feel like a good opportunity for a new start: Our intentions and resolutions can also feel shiny and new. But as time wears on, the novelty wears off, the resolution can become a source of stress and failure, and motivation tends to wane. However, the people who are successful at staying motivated, staying their course, and achieving goals have a few things in common.

Why Eustress Can Lead to More Progress

For starters, successful people understand how to make stress work with and for them, realizing that not all of it is equal. They embrace a concept known as “eustress,” a helpful and motivating form of stress. With eustress, we often feel that what we are going through is meaningful and is ultimately beneficial. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal discussed this in her TED Talk1 and book The Upside of Stress. Her research found stress isn’t inherently bad; rather, it’s the belief about it that determines whether it positively or negatively affects us.

A 2012 study found that people who experienced chronic stress in the previous year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying, but only for the people who also believed that it was harmful for their health.2 People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view it as harmful were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people with relatively little stress. Embracing eustress and practicing healthy coping strategies, such as proper self-care and connecting with others, helps you make steady progress, reduces the likelihood of losing motivation, and makes you more likely to achieve meaningful goals.

Embrace Your Emotions for Mental Health and Success

Successful people also develop emodiversity, or the capacity to experience and tolerate a range of emotions and feelings. In a previous post, I explored the value of emodiversity, which involves developing the capacity to experience the kaleidoscope of emotions—both positive and negative—that humans feel. To explore your capacity for emodiversity, consider which emotions you readily default to and which emotions you defend yourself from experiencing.

Success with your resolutions (and in life) requires emotional regulation, such as well-developed emodiversity, stress tolerance, and resilience. When excitement is in the rearview mirror, emotional regulation skills will serve you. For example, the skill of affect tolerance, which involves engaging with and tolerating emotions, remembering that all feelings come and go, that feelings won’t last forever, and that other feelings will emerge. Developing this capacity allows us not to attach too much meaning to the loss of motivation or resistance—it’s a natural part of the process that may signal a need to revise.

Tie Your Goals to Your Values

Tying your goal to something personally important—a project, cause, or value—is another way to maintain motivation. Instead of “I want to lose 10 pounds,” your resolution could be, “I want to have more energy to play with my kids.” Ambivalence powerfully impacts our psyche: We may want and not want something at the same time. So, to be effective, identifying what is truly meaningful typically involves sincere soul-searching. When you’re in touch with the why beneath your goal, it’s easier to keep it in your consciousness and not be deterred by your ambivalence about change, as well as the inevitable work, stress, and conflict associated with achieving your goal.

When it comes to achieving greater success with your resolutions, I encourage people to exercise what psychologists have termed “reflective functioning” and, more specifically, engage in what I call “resolution reflection.” For instance, have you made this resolution before? How did sticking with it impact your life? What did you learn about yourself since making the resolution? It may be that your resolution needs revision or refinement. Recognize negative emotions and self-criticism that are mentally linked to your resolutions. Perhaps you previously gave up on a resolution and developed guilt or shame about it. Research shows this can predispose you to losing motivation and giving up. Challenging these negative emotions and cultivating the aforementioned emotional regulation will help you stay motivated and fulfill your resolutions.

Additionally, the spirit of the resolution may be more valuable than the letter of the resolution. Focus on the values within the resolution rather than fulfilling all literal parts. For instance, you may resolve to relate to someone with more kindness rather than mend your challenging relationship with them. Focusing on the values might also entail zeroing in on a smaller part of the resolution. For instance, avoiding doughnuts because they negatively impact your blood sugar, rather than committing to losing 10 pounds.

Finally, finding success with your resolutions may mean pivoting on them. If your resolve starts to fade, explore what this may be signaling. Your process of reflection can shape how you pivot and be just as valuable as fulfilling the resolution itself. The resolution may or may not be serving you as you originally imagined. For instance, are you interested in mending a relationship because you think you “should” rather than because it’s something you truly want?

Pivoting demonstrates openness, receptivity, learning, flexibility, and adaptability, and may further express wisdom and humility. However, many people falsely associate pivoting or flexibility with weakness—they may imagine it is akin to “giving up” or failing. Making the “pivot to pivot,” often requires psychological growth. Being flexible, attuned, and adaptable to new learning and evolving circumstances requires empathy, reflection, and consciousness, and often demonstrates persistence, resilience, and wisdom, rather than failure. Cultivating emotional flexibility and a learning mindset can build resilience, sustain your progress, and help you stay motivated and achieve goals without losing motivation.

As we start this new year, remember that success is not something that’s achieved so much as built over time through healthy habits and routines. You can build success for yourself (whether that’s a New Year’s resolution or not) by practicing the concepts I mentioned: expanding your understanding of stress, tolerating a range of emotions, emotional regulation, reflective functioning, and pivoting when necessary.