Make Your New Year’s Resolution Stick by doing THIS
If you’re like most of us, you probably make New Year’s Resolutions. And like the rest of us, it often seems you’re bound to fail. According to Forbes, nearly 80% of people admit to abandoning their resolution by February.
With health and fitness being a core goal for so many people, it is necessary to create a situation you can continuously build on.
A New Year’s Resolution is intended to be a major life focus that you commit a year to improving.
Typical New Year’s Resolutions are:
- Exercise more
- Lose weight
- Improve financial situation (pay down debt, invest, etc.)
- Quit smoking
- Spend more time with family
It’s impractical to think you can achieve (or fail) a major life goal by February.
With health and fitness being on the top of many people’s lists, it is important to develop a plan and mindset to achieve this goal.
In regards to health and fitness, we must appreciate that health is a constantly, never-ending, moving state that will ebb and flow through life. We want to develop lifelong habits that move us in the right direction, and appreciate that some days will be better than others. The way we exercise, the way we eat food, and the way we recover are habits that carry with us. Each can be developed. Over time, as habits become easy and second nature, they can be put on autopilot and maintained through life.
Today is the only moment you can create an impact; and your option is to slightly improve your health and fitness for tomorrow, or slightly worsen it.
Keeping it simple, you are either in a fresh state (ready to train), or a pushed state (requiring recovery).
For people in a fresh state, they have the ability to push themselves out of their current comfort zone, leading to future improvements. If you stay in a fresh state for too long you risk the chance of becoming under-trained, which leads to weakening of the heart, lungs, and muscular system.
If you are in a pushed (stressed) state, the best impact you could have today would be taking time off. You can partake in active recovery like walking or mental health spending social time with family and friends. For people in pushed states, who are not allowing their bodies to recover, this results in over-training that overtime leads to overuse, fatigue, and breakdown.
It is crucial to take action that is focused on improving your current state.
This cyclical ability and understanding of moving between fresh and pushed states is necessary for improvement and recovery over the course of a New Year’s Resolution goal. Each day requires a balance between a little bit of pressure, and a little bit of relaxation.
Failure, doesn’t have a place here. It is not part of the equation.
When people do not appreciate the yin and yang of improve, we lose balance. In fitness programs, this becomes expressed as people who take wild cycles of long periods off, and/or to intense periods on.
We see people cycle in and out of fitness programs for a variety of reasons:
- Their time and schedule fluctuates
- They don’t know what to do in the gym and get bored
- They don’t think progression overtime, and push themselves too hard leading to injury
- But a common trap is their negative perception around failure.
For most of us, we view failure as the end. A stopping point. A fixed (all or nothing) mindset:
- “My schedule is too busy, I can’t do it”
- “I got hurt, and it’ll never work”
- “I can’t figure out what to do today. What machines will be open? What will I do next?”
We messed up. We suck. We stop trying.
Reframe Fail into Learning
- First.
- Attempt.
- In.
- Learning.
“FAILURE” is flawed because in life, you’re always in the game.
As life continues to tick, you’re continuously on a path of improvement or regression. Thinking everyday will be better than the day before is a myth. It’s not about being absolutely perfect or imperfect. Rather it’s a sliding scale – a continuum of progress. By abandoning the belief that you failed, you continue to put yourself in the game and build off the past, instead of reinventing the wheel every January 1st.
Develop your growth mindset.
- “My schedule is busy right now. What actions do I keep in place?” Our clients get “here is the best thing YOU can do today and here is a vacation program you can do in your hotel room, or with one piece of equipment while you travel.”
- “My arms are bothering me. Can I train my legs? Who can I see for my arms?” Our clients get “here is a skilled clinician, and here are exercises you can do to improve your injury, and here is what you can do to improve your fitness”
- “I’m tired of creating my own workouts. I’m going to join a facility where I don’t have to think about what to do.” Our clients get “a like minded community of dedicated clients, coaches, and clinicians that don’t require you to think, wait, or waste time. A program designed for you to succeed.”
You must develop the ability to limit swings of actions that take you off course.
DO NOT TAKE FAILURE, TAKE FEEDBACK
When you perceive a failure, develop the ability to reflect and figure out why. Take feedback, do not accept failure.
By shifting your mindset to “how can I better next time” (growth mindset), and not “I suck at this I give up” (fixed mindset) you’re able to make quicker decisions to get back on the right path. Rather than self-sabotaging and punishing yourself, you become objective, and make more informed choices based on what you’ve learned.
“I will no longer fail my New Year’s Resolution. I learn from setbacks and continue to move forward.”
Quitting your Health and Fitness Goals must go away for good because you don’t want to recycle this resolution year after year.
You deserve to learn, grow, improve, and move forward to what’s waiting ahead for you.
By identifying your setbacks you can take control of your actions and make immediate adjustments to improve your long term health and fitness.
It’s important for each of us to develop our own ability to check ourselves when we begin to slip, and to be able to identify when we’re going in the wrong direction. Ask yourself:
- What do you do when your schedule is busy?
- What foods do you eat when you are pressed for time?
- How do you react (cope) when you are stressed and frustrated?
- What leads you to take actions you regret later?
- How do you balance exercise, nutrition, social time, and work?
- If we always look for feedback and answers, we can eliminate the mindset of failure leading us to find solutions bringing us closer to reaching our goals, and find the best ways to problem solve.