It’s that time of year again. You’ve probably spent the last few days eating your own bodyweight in (less than totally healthy) food and sitting on your backside watching traditional Christmas movies (which if you’re Irish, means Indiana Jones… for some unknown reason).
You’re also probably reflecting on the past year, what you’ve achieved and what you haven’t and more importantly what you want to do for the coming year… that is, your New Year’s Resolutions. (NYR)
I’m hear to tell you stop that train of thought right now because it’s not doing you any favors.
Why you fail
If you’re anything like the vast majority of people, you’ve failed miserably at your NYRs within the first few weeks of the year (for many it’s the first few days or even hours). To be honest it never struck be as being sensible to begin some major life changes on a day you are likely to be seriously hung-over from the night before…. not many people are likely to want to go for a 5 mile jog and make themselves a nice healthy salad on a day when they’re really only physically capable of lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket and eating leftover pizza (I know you know what I’m talking about 😉 ).
Be it eating healthy, exercising more, learning a new language, mastering a new skill (dance anyone?) people decide to take on huge challenges and then give up at the first sign of difficulty. Inevitably, this year’s failed resolution will become the resolution for next year instead… and so continues the vicious cycle.
Don’t let some random date dictate when you make changes in your life. If you want something, go for it and stick with it.
3 Huge Mistakes
Most people who fail at making new changes in their lives do so because they’re making 3 very common mistakes.
- They aren’t specific with their goals
- They don’t plan on how to achieve their goals
- They attempt too much too soon and get demotivated when they fail
Be specific
If you want to learn to dance, what do you want to learn? Salsa, Bachata, Swing, Tango? There’s a lot of styles out there so you better look into it and ask around. If you want to eat healthy, what exactly do you mean by that? I’m a nutritionist and the term “healthy” is very subjective depending on who you speak to or what you read. You need to educate yourself to make informed decisions.
Plan
Once you know what you want, how are you going to achieve it? If it’s dancing, where are you going to take classes or go to socials. If it’s learning a new skill, what learning materials will you use. If it’s exercising more: when, where and what? If you fail to plan you plan to fail.
Slow and Steady
You want to get a beach body by summer so do you decide to immediately go from doing no exercise at all to lifting weights 7 days a week? Hell no, that’s a quick way to burnout and failure. Equally, do you decide to do two hours of language exchanges every day to learn French? It’s just not realistic. Fair enough, it might work for some people but not for the majority. If you want to develop new better habits, you’ve got to make them easy to stick to at first otherwise you’ll get fed up pretty damn quick.
Make it a long term change
When people decide on their NYRs they generally do something to try and improve their lives; to be healthier and happier. These aren’t things that you should undertake lightly… your health and happiness are the most important things you will ever have.
So, instead make these changes something that you’re going to work on gradually and CONSISTENTLY… for the rest of your life.
Don’t decide to go on a drastic diet and start binge exercising just so you can fit into a dress for a wedding in April, only give up entirely once the wedding is over. Instead decide to start making some lifestyle changes that will allow you live a healthier life, with a body you can be proud of for the rest of your years.
Don’t suddenly decide to give up all alcohol for the next 6 months if all you want to do is reduce your consumption to be healthier (Bear in mind that I don’t drink alcohol at all but also did my masters thesis on the health benefits of wine so I have conflicting opinions on the subject). If giving up booze entirely makes you unhappy or isolates you from your social groups then you’re very likely to give up on it entirely and just continue drinking as much as ever.
What I’m saying is that life changes don’t need to be ridiculously drastic nor should they make you miserable. The more drastic they are and the more miserable the make you the more likely you are to just give up and go back to the way you were before. Consistency is key in life, be it diet, nutrition, dance or whatever. To make something work you need to stick with it (assuming you really want it to work).
And this brings us back to New Year’s Resolutions. These important life changes or goals you have shouldn’t be dependent on a specific time or day of the year. The benefits of change are reaped over time, not instantly so it doesn’t matter if you decide to make a change the day before new years or a month later or in the middle of September. What matters is that you stick to your guns and make the change a consistent part of your life. As Aristotle famously said “We are what we repeatedly do” (not what we do for the first 2 or 3 weeks after New Years).
I haven’t made a New Year’s Resolution in a long time and I’m very happy with the results. Try to forget about them this year and instead make a long term effort to be consistent and really achieve the things you want in life.
Happy New Year, folks.
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Have you been working-out lately? Because you look spectacular 🙂 If you liked this article go ahead and share it with your friends via the Facebook or Twitter buttons below and if you use Stumbleupon please give it a “Thumbs Up”. I’d really appreciate it 😉
The Dancing Irishman 
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