We’re now two months into 2021 and a good majority of us have probably already ditched our new year’s resolutions because we realized we’re not up to commit to it for one whole year. But what if I told you there was a way for you to cross off your new year’s resolutions without feeling like you’re sacrificing too much? I know I’m not the only one offering advice on how to achieve your new year’s resolutions. In fact, there are probably hundreds of blog posts, podcasts, and books offering the same piece of advice. All I ask is for you to hear me out and maybe I can convince you.
In order to change things, we first need to understand what went wrong before. What stopped you from achieving last year’s resolutions? It could be the same reason for most of us: something we didn’t see coming. Did you plan to wake up at 5 am every morning to do yoga before work? Maybe you did keep up with it, but then you got sick for a week and didn’t have the energy to get up that early. After that, you just beat yourself up because you couldn’t keep it up and ultimately decided to give up. Instead of beating yourself up for not keeping up with it, celebrate small steps instead. Baby steps are still steps taken. Keep tabs on the progress you make and eventually you’ll see how far you’ve come since you’ve started.
Another thing you can do is set tangible goals that you can stick. Some people, after accomplishing goals, go back to how they were before. For example, what if your goal by the end of the year was to lose 20 pounds but 8 months in and you’ve already lost that much weight? What you should NOT do is go back to the lifestyle you were living before you lost all that weight. If you plan on losing weight and maintaining it, then stick to a more long-term goal by committing to it, like being more active or adding more greens to your diet and laying off the sweets. The more tangible you want your goals to be, the more you should be willing to commit to keeping it up once you’ve attained it.
Lastly, and arguably the most important one, change your perspective. The reason why so many people give up on their resolutions quickly is because these goals usually require so much motivation and self-discipline to accomplish. Sometimes, we have days where we just don’t have the motivation for anything, and when we push ourselves during times like that, the higher the resistance becomes. To get past this, try looking at through a different set of lenses. Instead of obsessing over running 5 miles every day, why not appreciate the fact that this week, you could run an extra minute longer before you needed to catch your breath? Envisioning yourself as a better person through the progress you made would definitely fuel you to keep up with it.
Goals are a great way for us to have something tangible we want to work towards, but it’s more important to have a long-term vision for ourselves. Just because it’s 2021’s resolutions doesn’t mean we reset when we get to 2022. We should always strive to become the best versions of ourselves. The good thing about working towards being better is that eventually it starts positively affecting other aspects in our life, too.