This Year’s Resolutions: 365 Days to a Better You!

Part One

Every year, we make resolutions to better our lives in some way. The goals are good: to lose weight, quit smoking, or save money, but the temptations we face on a daily basis can make it difficult to stay on track. This article provides you with some simple suggestions that can help you stay on track, make changes, and achieve your goals.

The key to your success is planning. Perhaps you are familiar with the expression, “When you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” but how do we plan to change long established behaviors? Keeping it simple helps. Most habits are established through years of practice, so it takes time. During the next few weeks, we will post articles designed to help you become successful in achieving your goal and reinventing yourself over the next year by defining three steps to success. The three phases are: 1) setting realistic and attainable goals, 2) planning long-term and short-term goals with rewards for accomplishing those goals, and 3) keeping track of your progress.

In Part One of this three part series, we will discuss the first phase…

Phase 1: Setting Realistic and Attainable Goals

When setting your goals, first reflect on how your present lifestyle and choices affect your future. Are your habits causing detrimental health effects? Are your relationships in need of improvement? Is your career at stake? Do you get upset easily or have anxiety and need a hobby to relieve stress? Decide what parts of your life need to change in order to prevent negative outcomes in the future. After selecting a few areas to focus on, prioritize them based on what is most important and what is realistic in order to improve the parts of your life that critically need to change first. The first step does not need to be the biggest, but it needs to be achievable, in the right direction, and can provide a platform on which to build future improvements.

It is important to be realistic when choosing your goals. In order to sustain long-term results without giving way under trial or affliction, be careful to not set goals that are too difficult to achieve. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, do not plan on losing more than two pounds per week; losing weight too quickly is unhealthy and unrealistic. If you decide that you need to get in shape, rather than possibly going from not exercising at all to working out rigorously every single day, arrange to just exercise three or four days per week. This plan will improve your health and is a more reasonable approach to achieving your goal.

Don’t set too many goals at once. If you are going to quit smoking, this is a big goal with huge health benefits. Smoking cessation can be difficult and frustrating, and set-backs do occur. Bigger goals require bigger efforts. Don’t overwhelm your mind and body by trying to do too much. You can quit smoking and maintain your weight this year, and next year you can go for your ideal weight loss with greater confidence. Long-term sustainability is more important than immediate results, so as long as you are making some progress, you will be more likely to stay on track to eventually attain your goal sometime in the future. If everything is going great, you can always set more challenging goals.

It is also helpful if you set goals that are synergistic, so that progress toward one goal helps you reach the other. For example, if your goals are saving money and weight loss, you can choose to eat out less often. This will save you both money and calories. An exercise regimen and healthy eating also go hand in hand. Exercise can also be a great way to reduce stress as well as to become healthier. Choosing goals that require similar steps to achieve them will give you twice the reward for the same effort, helping you stay motivated.

In our next blog, we will talk about the second phase: how to plan your goals and rewards. Be sure to stay tuned…