health

I’m cutting it a bit fine posting this today – I think I should have really done this at the beginning of the year! But anyway, I think I’ve still got time. So I wanted to talk a bit about resolutions and why I don’t like them.

Resolutions can quite often set us up for failure. We have this big idea in our heads that we need to get resolutions done by midnight on December 31. And we carry that into January. And what basically tends to happen is, we have these big resolutions that are completely unachievable, and then we beat ourselves up when we fail.

I combat that by setting goals, instead of resolutions, and goals can be set at any time of the year. It’s a popular time of year to set them. So I’m going to give you a few tips.

GETTING STARTED

First of all, you need to make goals manageable. If it’s something that you can’t see yourself achieving, you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead of saying, “I’m going to lose three stone by the summer,” break it down into smaller chunks and say, “I’m going to lose one to two pounds each week.”

So, how do I lose that one to two pounds? Well, I’m going to eat healthier and I am going to exercise. How do I eat healthier and how do I exercise? I’m going to attend a fitness class, I’m going to make sure that I include more fruit and vegetables in my diet and drink plenty of water at the same time.

So we’ve taken that big goal of losing a significant amount over six months, breaking it down into a weekly goal and then we’ve broken it down again. So we understand exactly how we’re going to manage that. And that, in itself, is a simple, straightforward way of setting goals. It’s simple. But it’s not easy because we have to have motivation and discipline. And when we don’t have motivation, we quite often have to rely on discipline to help get us through.

SCHEDULE EVERYTHING

Making routines for ourselves and scheduling time for ourselves is important. So one of the things that you can do is sit down and break down your weekly schedule. And this may take some time. I’d say set aside maybe 30 minutes just to get everything jotted down. Use something like Google Calendar, Outlook, or whatever it is that you’ve got on your phone, and actually block out time. So I block out time for work, block out time for kids. My two children have an abundance of things that they do after school. So I have to make sure that I schedule that in and also block out self-care time as well. So you know exactly what it is that you can do with your time.

Once you know how much time you’ve got to play with, then you can start to slot in the things that you need to do to be able to achieve those goals.

So forget resolutions. Resolutions are not what you’re aiming for. You want to get goals set, and if you have structure and you know exactly what you’re doing with your goals, it’s going to be so much easier for you to achieve them!

I hope that helps. Please comment below wherever you see, hear, or read this, and I will see you next time for some more information around health and fitness!