The year 2024 arrives in a matter of days! So, it is time to start thinking about your New Year's resolutions. Are you ready to make some changes and make 2024 your year? 

There is a common myth that New Year's resolutions are pointless because people often do not follow through on them. However, research shows that setting New Year’s resolutions can increase the probability of achieving goals by 1050% after six months. So whether you are choosing to drink more mindfully, quit alcohol, start exercising or be kinder to yourself, making a New Year’s resolution does help. 

But the question remains: how can you actually change your habits? Here are six tips from Steve Bartlett that will help you change your habits and meet your goals. 

1.Break Down the Simple Factors Influencing Your Habits 

The first thing to do when trying to change your habits is to really reflect on the habit you are looking to change. It is essential to explore the factors and triggers that influence your habits. What is it that triggers you to drink or smoke? Why haven’t you prioritised going for a walk? What concrete things cause you to talk to yourself like that?

By identifying the cues that trigger a habit, you can start changing and avoiding these triggers. In turn, this makes it easier to no longer reinforce bad habits. By understanding the circumstances that cause you to act on certain habits, you can make more holistic changes to your life. This means that you will likely make more long-term changes. 

2. Have a Strong Reason to Change Your Habits

Strong motivations and reasons to change are necessary if you want long-term and meaningful change in your habits. These motivations give you a reason to push through the challenging times that will come when changing your habits. Superficial reasons will make long-term change harder because they are easy to forget. However, genuine reasons and intrinsic motivation are the powerhouse for genuine change. 

Some of the intrinsic motivations people have for changing their alcohol habits include the following:

• To focus on health and wellness

• To stop it from negatively affecting existing illnesses

• To take control of mental health

• To prioritise and help aid relationships

• To save money

If you have a genuine reason to make a change, commit that reason to memory. Write it down and keep it somewhere accessible so that when times get tough, you can remember why you are trying to change your habits. 

3. Avoid Focussing on Quitting

Often New Year’s resolutions are framed as “quitting alcohol”, “no more junk food”, or “never smoking a cigarette again”. But solely focussing on quitting can hinder your chances of making long-term changes. Suppressing thoughts about something makes you focus on and crave that thing even more. So it can even cause you to carry out the behaviour more. 

Instead of solely focusing on stopping bad habits, it is more effective to redirect your attention to a similar but more positive habit. Simply put, replacing the old habit with a similar but healthier habit can lead to more successful long-term change. 

For instance, when giving up alcohol, if you switch your alcoholic drinks to a non-alcoholic variant, you will find it easier to cut down your alcohol intake. This is because you won’t feel like you are denying yourself anything, so will keep your body's dopamine reward system happy. 

4. Avoid Straining Your Willpower 

The reality is that willpower alone cannot change your habits. Willpower is a finite resource and starts to run out when we put ourselves under pressure or when life gets stressful. 

There are two main ways to avoid straining your willpower. One is to set smaller, achievable goals. Smaller goals help us feel like we are constantly achieving our goals. This sense of achievement helps maintain willpower. Instead of setting a target to quit alcohol forever, a more achievable goal could be trying a sober month challenge like Dry January. 

The second method to sustain your willpower is to reward yourself regularly. Achieving smaller goals will help keep your dopamine reward system activated. Simple ways to reward yourself include buying a tasty bottle of alcohol-free spirits to help keep yourself motivated. If you treat yourself well, you will associate your new habits with positive feelings.

5. Ask Yes or No Questions

When assessing your habits and creating new habits, keep it simple. Asking yourself a simple yes or no question about a habit impacts the way you choose to continue that habit in the future. This is known as the question behaviour effect. 

Asking a simple yes or no question forces you to make a binary analysis of your habits, leaving no room to make excuses for behaviours. It can trigger cognitive dissonance in people if the behaviour they exhibit doesn’t align with the behaviour they would like to exhibit. It forces people to actually confront the reality of their behaviour, which makes it easier to find intrinsic motivation and start to make long-term habit changes. 

6. Act with Empathy 

A prerequisite for making any changes is to act with empathy. Whether you are supporting someone else in changing their habits or changing your own, empathy is a must. Changing habits is challenging. It takes time and requires motivation. By treating yourself with kindness you make this process much easier. 

In practice, this means that if you, for example, slip up and have an alcoholic drink, you don’t need to berate yourself. All you need to do is acknowledge it happened and keep on trying the next day and the next day. Everyone makes mistakes and slips up here and there, so instead of letting it get in the way of long-term change, treat yourself with kindness and empathy. These small slip-ups are part of the journey to change your habits, not an end to it. 

Change Your Habits with the JOMO Club

If you want to change your drinking habits effectively, why not dive into the exciting world of alcohol-free drinks? You can find your new favourite alcohol-free drinks by signing up for a JOMO Club alcohol-free subscription box. 

Each subscription box is mindfully curated and uses the best quality and most ethically made alcohol-free products available. Many of these come from small, individual companies with a true passion for their product and an artisanal distillation process. 

Every alcohol-free hamper includes:

• One full-sized alcohol-free spirit

• Paired mixers, garnishes and mocktail recipes

• A range of ready-to-drink alcohol-free beverages

• A selection of delicious snacks

• A magazine with everything you need to know about your new beverages. 

So sign up for now and find the Joy Of Missing Out or the JOMO.