A Better Solution to your New year New you Resolution
The start of a new year often comes with a wave of ambitious "New Year, New You" resolutions. We vow to hit the gym daily, quit sugar cold turkey, and finally learn that instrument gathering dust in the corner. While the spirit of self-improvement is admirable, there's a good chance, by the time you even read this article, you may have quit, restarted and then "requited" your resolutions multiple times. But, luckily , it’s not you.... It’s Yours resolution. This year, let's rethink our approach. Instead of overwhelming ourselves with lofty, long-term goals, let's focus on creating a more sustainable and fulfilling path to personal growth. Here's how:
Focus on Controllable Actions
We should start by shifting our focus away from the outcomes of our goals and more on the actions and steps we need to take to achieve those outcomes. To use weight lost as an example... While you may have the 2025 goal of losing 20 lbs, what, exactly does that mean for today. If, however, we change that to walking for 30 minute, 5 times a week, it gives our ambitions something more specific to focus on and also allows for more constructive feedback if we don't find ourselves on track come February, March.... Etc.
Adopt a Monthly Focus
With the changing of the Calendar year, it's easy to get a bit ahead of ourselves when planning out 2025. Sure, it may be easier to think of the year in one big overarching goal, but just as the years seem short, the days and weeks can be long. Your lifestyle, your interests and even the availability of foods and activities can change alot month to month and season to season. Why not take advantage of this and set shorter term goals that allow for flexibility when life throws you curveballs and also helps you celebrate small wins to let you know when you're on the right path. I think most of us would agree, one month is definitely easier to "win" than one year. And even in the months that we feel "defeated", with a monthly approach, there will always a new month just around the corner.
Prioritize Individual Needs, Priorities and Ability Levels. If you spend enough time in a gym or talking to people that do, you will hear some pretty amazing feats of Physical strength and Mental toughness... some of which may even be true. That being said, you're going to want to ignore all of those. One of the hardest things to do with resolutions and goal setting in general, is to make the goal about YOU. This not only includes making sure you select things to work on that are genuinely important to you, but it also means taking into account your current skill, experience or fitness center level when deciding what to do right now. With fitness and health, change is a relative endeavor. Your body doesn't care about what your Instagram's hero's bench press is or how Hugh Jackman became a jacked man. Whether it’s coming up with the best fitness routine, or deciding how to eat differently to add more muscle, small changes done sustainably will beat out big changes done briefly. We want to keep this in mind when selecting goals that can not only be achieved on our best days but also on our worse days.
Ultimately, the goal of self-improvement should be to enhance our lives and add to our self empowerment, not add more stress or subtract from our confidence By ditching the rigid "New Year, New You" mentality and embracing a more flexible, personalized approach, we can create a sustainable path to lasting change. So, let go of the pressure to be perfect and focus on progress, one small step at a time.