Bonus: many come with badges or certificates, offering a visual representation of your accomplishments. These races are very customizable and can be done no matter your preferences (group or private setting, indoors or outdoors, walking or running) making it easy to get in on the fun. In this case, a 5K requires a certain level of physical fitness-something you would likely be unable (or unwilling) to do if you were no longer sober. Keeping yourself on track for the long-haul means having future goals that require you to follow through. Visualizing what your success looks like will keep you on track to making sure it comes to fruition. Think about the kind of food you’d serve, what you’d do for entertainment, the people you’d want to attend, and even what the invitations would say. Mark the dates of when you’d hit meaningful sobriety milestones and actually plan out how you would celebrate your accomplishment. If you don’t have anything to RSVP to just yet, create your own events that do double duty of promoting your resolution to stay sober. But having fun things to look forward to in your calendar is a great way of maintaining motivation. In January, the idea of staying sober through all the months, and their respective holidays can seem daunting. Pre-plan celebrations for your sobriety milestones Fitness trackers like Fitbit and Apple Watch allow for competitions between peers, and health-based social sites like MyFitnessPal make it easy to share such information. Since participants don’t have to be someone within the recovery community, you have a wider pool of people to compete with. By focusing on the foundations of an overall healthy lifestyle, you are even less likely to revert back to your old ways. Challenge a group of friends to non-sobriety-related goals like who hits their hydration goals first, has the most steps in a day, or does the most workouts during a week. Turn healthy habits into a competition with friendsĪ little healthy competition is always a good thing, especially if you use it to propel yourself into making healthy habits. Having a sense of community and social support, whether it’s people rooting for you or whom you don’t want to disappoint, will remind you that you’re not alone in your endeavor. By publicizing your intentions, you invite others to help hold yourself accountable and also to offer encouragement and praise-another powerful motivator. Studies have shown that sharing your goals with others makes you more likely to follow through. Breaking your ultimate goal into smaller chunks can make it seem much more achievable, but perhaps more importantly, will get you thinking about actionable steps that create a pathway to success. Some examples are to avoid the beer and wine aisle at the grocery store or leaving your ID in the car (so that you legally can’t purchase it), avoiding restaurants that offer drinks on happy hours, or getting rid of your alcohol paraphernalia. When trying to tackle a lofty goal like this, it’s best to break it up into smaller steps that actually outline how you can make it happen. Staying sober is a simple resolution to set, but it’s certainly no small task. Don’t leave your recovery up to chance, here are 7 simple-but-effective ideas for sticking to your New Year’s resolution to stay sober. For recovering addicts, there’s one glaring resolution that may be an obvious one to make, but is a monumental goal that requires more than an extra boost of motivation that will probably fade by February (sorry resolutioners, studies have proven it). There’s nothing like the start of a new year to give us the nudge we need to finally become who we want to be.

Myfitnesspal.com resolutioners