It’s already March! It’s time to check-in. How are your New Year’s Resolutions coming along? Have you been able to follow through with your goals?
After going through the holidays abandoning most of our responsibilities, indulging in things we regularly wouldn’t. New Year’s Resolutions provide a chance for a fresh start. However, when the excitement of a new year wears off, many people struggle with the motivation to stick to their plans. In fact, according to Forbes, studies have shown that less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days, and only 8% accomplish them. We make New Year’s resolutions with the best intentions although when life takes over, we fall off the bandwagon and end up leaving our resolutions in the dust.
Focusing on the outcome and not the journey can lead to a feeling of disappointment when a goal isn’t achieved. Switching your yearly “resolution” and turning it into a “theme” instead, can be really beneficial. A theme represents a broad name for the general direction you want to navigate your life, an important goal that resonates personally with you. For example, a person trying to lose weight would declare their theme of the year to be, year of health or a person trying to spend less or pay off credit card debt would declare their theme to be the year of finances. Choosing a theme guides your year to the right shape and direction.
Setting a new year’s theme will allow your goal to grow and adapt with you reminding you to be different in little moments. At any moment unseen obstacles happened and expecting ourselves to atomically adhere to a resolution such as going to the gym every day can become an added stressor and lead to gym memberships you’ll probably never use. New habits aren’t formed overnight be patient. When trying to build yourself into a better version precision doesn’t matter, all that matters is the constant improvement.
Having a theme will help notice paths that would’ve been otherwise ignored; it allows room for change without the guilt of having failed to attain specific goals. For example, if it’s your year of reading when stuck in a long line at the store during a big sale day, why not open up a book or kindle app. instead of scrolling through social media. Who said you need to read at least an hour in one go? Maybe it’s your year of health, there are plenty of free at-home workouts on YouTube that only require 15 minutes of your time per day skip the gym membership until you actually start working out consecutively also grabbing an apple instead of a bag of chips for a snack.
Small successes lead to great accomplishments. As you build self-trust in achieving the small things your motivation grows. Invent challenges to strengthen your ability. Furthermore, realize your only human skipping a workout doesn’t mean you failed to own up to it and get back on track the next day. The faster you can move on from denial to acceptance in regards to yesterday’s failures; the sooner you can start focusing on the now. It’s only been a few weeks! There is no quick fix the key is consistency.
