New Year’s resolutions are exciting. They can create a sense of motivation and hope for taking control of your health and bettering the year ahead.

However, if you fall short on taking action to make change or reach your goals, you may feel a sense of failure.

We might even engage in more negative thoughts, which are unmotivating altogether thus negatively affecting our neurochemistry.

Creating and even just thinking about creating a resolution often causes us to feel stressed, overwhelmed, or even depressed. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be a certain way or to stop/start a habit, and when we fail to keep our resolutions — which more than 90 percent of us do fail at this — we then feel those negative feelings.

Making healthy changes is still a good thing and worth striving for.

However, readjusting your approach and mentality in the following 4 ways can set you up for greater success.

1. Don’t put so much ‘weight’ on January

While kicking off a goal at the start of the year is tempting, too much pressure is put on January.

If you want to make a change and create a different reality for yourself in any area of your life, change must start now. Not Monday, not January 1, but right now. If we feel that we can only make changes/resolutions on Jan. 1, we set ourselves up to fail.

2. Strive for progress not perfection

When perfection is the goal rather than progress, most people end up quitting as soon as they realize they can’t be “perfect.”

The best and easiest way to become healthier is to create lifelong habits. Diets don’t work, but healthy eating habits that are sustainable for the long run do work. Exercising every day for 3 weeks and then giving up will not bring you results. Exercising 3 days a week for the rest of your life will.

3. Focus on improving your brain health

While typical resolutions have more to do with how your body looks than how you feel emotionally, try to reverse that sentiment.

Most people have this just a little bit backward and think if they lost weight, they would feel better. While this can be true in some cases, we don’t always go about it in the healthiest ways.

Focusing on improving the health of your brain as a way to naturally increase your feel-good chemicals. By doing so, you’ll feel more alert, do more, and naturally want to exercise, and eat better.

Because 2020 has been emotionally fatiguing, how about focusing on the health of your brain as a resolution for 2021.

4. Give yourself time

It takes time to see changes in the body caused by fitness and diet.

It often took many months or even years for your body to get to the point where it is, so it will take time to get back to where you’d like it to be.

While a “quick fix” is desirable, when it comes to fitness and diet, one doesn’t exist.

It is hard work. If a fitness routine or a diet sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

Obsessing about what the scale shows adds to the time crunch.

This is just a number and only tells a small part of the story. Our weight fluctuates every day and even throughout the day. When we start working out, our body composition changes, meaning we are losing body fat while gaining muscle.

The number on the scale may not change, but you will notice your clothes fitting better, and that means you are losing inches because you are losing fat and replacing it with muscle, which is much leaner.