Personal Training
Screw New Years Resolutions. Why They Can Tear You Away From Your Goals and What To Do About It.
Dec
I just googled “New Years Resolutions” on the internet. Hundreds of sites came up with all sorts of topics such as
‘The most common New Years resolutions”
“How to stick to your New Years resolutions this year”
“Why you should make resolutions in 2016”
“5 New Years Resolutions that will change your life”
The titles go on and on. Every year, we sit and like clock work-we make a list of resolutions that will set apart 2016 from any other year
‘This year, I will lose 10 lbs”
‘This year, I will quit smoking”
“This year ,I will travel to a new place”
“This year, I will be less stressed and find ways to handle it”
“This year, I will volunteer”
‘This year, I will meet the man of my dreams”
“This year, I will make $10,000 more dollars at my job”
“This year, I will fit into those skinny jeans by June”
We think, we make lists, we stick it on our fridge and we are committed. For likeeeee 1 month. Then life happens and our resolutions that we so committed ourselves to take a backseat.
In theory, the idea of ‘resolutions are very sound. We think of a goal. We see how we will get there. We wake up on January 1st ready to tackle it and then 3 weeks go by and you can’t even remember what your ‘resolution’ was.
Why does this happen? We beat ourselves up because we vowed to be different. This year was going to be different than last year. I had GOALS!?!?! Oh well…maybe I will get to it next year…
This is a very common way of thinking for most Americans who set themselves to such high standards with their New Years Resolutions, yet just like clock work, we do this every. Damn. Year. Guys…theres no magic formula in the fact that you should be setting these goals to yourself for January 1st, yet like clockwork, we always set out to ‘do better’ this year and start with a clean slate.
There are some reasons why I believe that resolutions can often fail and how to set better goals!
They Aren’t Meaningful
The idea to stop smoking, exercise more, limit to 1 alcoholic drink a week, get 1 manicure a month instead of 4. These ideas are great but the problem is that they are based on what you think you should be doing, not actually what you want to do. Just the other day, I was reading an article on a blog and one of the authors goals for 2015 was to read 1 new book every month.
I thought to myself:
“NICE! This is an awesome goal, I have always wanted to commit myself to reading more. I think I want this goal for 2016.”
Then, I realized something. Why didn’t I think of this goal myself? I had to read an article to get an ‘idea’ for a silly resolution to read a book? Chances are, if this wasn’t in the forefront of my mind, it probably wasn’t that meaningful to me. The idea of reading a book is an awesome goal, society says that reading makes us more smart and this goal, I realized was all of the sudden decided by peoples expectations or by reading an article that states someone elses’ goal. We have to remember to forget what other people think of us, dig deep and find something meaningful to YOU, screw what society says. It can be hard, I know.
Maybe you find yourself overtraining and a goal would be to take 2 rest days a week. Think about how that sounds when you tell someone:
“Oh yeah, new 2016 resoluton is to workout LESS” ……..WHAT!?
They will look at you like you like you just turned into Kim Kardashian. This is ludacris?! But you know what? This is YOUR goal, you have to put what society thinks and sees to the wayside.
We are constantly judging ourselves based on how others see us. Screw them. Focus on what you want. No one realllllllly cares about your goals, so make it your priority to care about yours.
Timing Isn’t On Your Side
January 1st hits. Its time to get that resolution in place. This makes no effing sense! Why wait until January 1st to set an intention or goal? What if the timing isn’t right in your life for this goal to happen? Or what if you want to start NOW but its November 13th? Why do we base our lives around certain times. Life is every evolving and you need to jump at every oppourtunity. It is physically impossible to time your life and to be honest? I think this is actually pretty awesome. Sometimes the timing is off in many aspects of your life, yet we find ourselves trying to force it. I remember earlier this year, I was planning on training for another fitness competition I wrote a whole post about it. My heart was not fully in it. The timing was not right for me. I was going through a lot of other personal things, including working on myself in other aspects of my life besides getting on stage for a 6th time, so I knew that the timing was right for me. I forced it for a while and just kept saying
“I’ll get there. Next week will be better.”
When my coach asked if I had a suit picked out
“Oh yeah… I have the swatches, but haven’t picked out the exact one”
You guys…my LIFE was competing for 3 years. I would eat, sleep and breathe training for my next competition. I purposely took time off to focus on my health, personal life and career. It was very important to me to have a balance between everything so when I began training for this show, I had so many thoughts running through my head.
I wanted to travel.
I wanted to drink a glass of wine with my friends.
I wanted to go on dates and not ask the waiter to bring me a plain piece of chicken breast. (Now, I have a boyfriend who is in FULL support of anything I want to do, shows included!
) But to be honest, meeting someone was HIGH in my priority list. This to me, was more important than training for that show back in the spring.
The timing NEEDS to be there for you to commit to something; to anything!
I do believe that if the time is right in your life and January 1st is the time to commit yourself to do something, by all means–DO IT! Sometimes we need big timed markers to take advantage of this fresh opportunity to start new ( like New Years or your birthday or the start of a new job) These important and pivotal days and times in our lives can be the fuel we need to start the fire for us to start TODAY. Just to be clear, I am not suggesting NOT to start your goal or resolution on January 1st, 2016, but I am suggesting to just take out a piece of paper and think about what you will need to get to your goal and what are the priorities you need to have clear in your life to get there. If the time is right…GET IT!
Theres No True Motivation Or Level of commitment
I remember one year, I had a New Years resolution to go to 1 yoga class a week. This ‘goal’ was back in 2010 and it was during a time that I loathed yoga. I almost never went to a class and the mere throught of it made me bored. I was drowning myself in the ‘cardio queen’ phase of my workout journey and so the thought of standing in a room and moving slow, breathing, working on my flexibility and mental clarity was merely a laughable twinkle in my eye.
Its funny because now? I can’t live without yoga. Not a week goes by that I don’t make it a priority in my weekly regimen. It is a part of my life and I am 100% commited to it. Yoga forces my mind to slow down, it forces me to challenge myself mentally and brings a whole new level of athleticism to my body. The issue was when I tried to ‘force’ myself to attend a yoga class was that
I was not committed.
Goals need commitment because without it, this goal isn’t all that meaningful to you and therefore you are way more likely to throw it to the wayside. When you commit yourself to something, it will hold a huge relevance for you in your life. There is always going to be that initial thought o :h YEAHHH I am going to DO this this time around” But sooner or later, you may end up discouraged and ungratified because you couldn’t follow through on something you thought you could but in reality, the timing and relevance to this goal wasn’t there in the first place.
There Always Has to Be A Balance
The problem with attaching yourself to one main outcome or goal is that when you pour everything into it and it doesn’t workout the way it was ‘supposed’ to, you have failed. How many times have you ‘tried’ to do something or commit yourself to something and then said
“That was NOT what was supposed to happen” or “Screw it. I failed. I suck. The end”
We either succeed or we fail. Theres really no in between and in my eyes? This is not only fair to yourself, but its not way to live your life. When we put our lives in the hands of our goals, don’t reach it, get frustrated and then spiral downward, it can be a vicious cycle that for some reason we all get so attached to.
“This time, it’ll happen” “This time, I’ll do better”
You were doing great all along! There doesn’t always have to be a ‘better’
During this time of growth, there is a chance you may have missed something pretty spectacular that was right in front of you, yet you missed it because you were so focused on that very specific outcome.
Lets take a new job for example. You had an amazing year in your sales career and you want to increase that by 15%. This (from the surface) Sounds great! You will be focused on getting new customers and maybe stay an extra hour after work, be present at all of those meetings you missed last year and focus all on your career.
Your boyfriend wants you to go on a trip with him and his family to Brazil in March- your busy season. You pass it up to stay focused on work. You start getting home late. You missed your anniversary. You are missing out on the balance that you once had in your relationship which was always something that you told yourself you would make a priority.
I am in no way saying that you shouldn’t set career goals, I think this is such an amazing thing to do, but what I am saying is to look at the BIG PICTURE of your life before setting a goal that will effect other areas of your life negatively.
So, when you set your goals, make sure that you strike the right balance between different areas of your life. And remember that “balance” is different for everyone.
The List Of What You Can Do:
- YOUR Goal should fit YOUR life. This is the #1 point you should think about before jumping right in to something you don’t know HOW could possibly fit into your life.
- Ask yourself several questions before committing yourself to a goal.
- If theres an area of your life that you want to work on or improve, talk to someone you know who’s been there and done that. Think of someone you work with or maybe a friend or family member to ask for advice on where to start. Its OKAY to ask for help and guidance.
- Write out a plan of action as to how you can make your goal a reality. Right now, it may just be a far fetched thought in your mind. Make it happen and give yourself a deadline to write out that action plan
- Start whenever is the right time to start. You don’t have to wait until New Years.
- Instead of writing out resolutions for the year ahead, I take this time to reflect on the year behind me. What did I accomplish? Where could I have improved? What didn’t I do that I wish I did? What did I do that I didn’t think I could? Its a great time to check in with yourself to see where you’re at in your life and you may get a little idea of where you’ll go in 2016!
- Resolve to work on a few small things that can greatly improve your life rather than take a HUGE goal right away. For instance. I had a goal to volunteer this past year. I told myself (in my head) that I would volunteer at least 5 hours a week every week. This in hindsight didn’t seem like a huge deal at all. I could totally do this. I wanted to as well! Work gets crazy, life gets crazy and I soon realized that 2 hours a week was doable some weeks but not others. I got upset with myself because I couldn’t commit as much time as I originally set out. What I should’ve done was commit myself to the initial volunteer meeting and then schedule at least 2x a month to attend an event. By setting myself up for smaller more attainable goals rather than one BIG one, I would have succeeded and given myself the confidence I needed to shoot bigger next time!
- Set “TO DO” goals other than OUTCOME goals, so instead of “lose 10lbs” You could say “Workout 3x a week for 30 minutes and eat protein in at least 3 of my meals a day”
Hopefully now, you feel a little more at ease with why you don’t HAVE to come up with resolutions for January 1st. If you have them already then great! Keep that going but if you don’t know or don’t have one right now…thats OKAY! Your goal should be first and foremost to think about yourself and what you want. Then you can set a date and an outline on how you can get there
I love you all and thank you for always checking in, commenting, reading along and being the most awesome readers out there!!
XO
NAOMI
