REALISTIC NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS
Before you scroll away thinking this is going to be me deterring you from making any new years goals at all WAIT PLEASE.
I am human too, I have made many new year's resolutions that I have absolutely forgotten about within a month or simply was not able to keep up with my wildly ambitious and probably unreasonable goals. What I want to do today is empower you and give you the tools you need to set yourself up for greatness.
You had the same thought at 2AM that you need to reinvent yourself and have ultimately come up with a bunch of ways you plan to do so? Great, let’s talk about it.
First things first you must define exactly what you would like to accomplish. I also recommend physically writing this down, it makes it feel more * real *
Examples:
Read 12 books
Start waking up at 5:30 AM
Go to the gym 4x per week
Be able to do unassisted pull-ups
You then need to determine how you will know that you have accomplished these goals. Some goals will be easier than others to know when they are completed. Such as “Read 12 books”, you will know that it is completed when you… read those 12 books.
Others not so much. Maybe you want to be better with budgeting your money or decrease your overall food waste. These may be a bit more difficult to know when exactly that goal is accomplished.“Be better at budgeting”
You may need to determine a set amount of money you would like to spend, or even simplify it even more to specific things you spend money on (e.g. clothes, food, entertainment, etc.)
“Decrease overall food waste”
This can be tricky as you most likely are not going to gather all your food waste and weigh it BUT you can use other factors such as how often you are cooking at home, how often are you letting food go bad, are you purchasing less at the grocery store?
Really all you need to do is track your progress in some sort of way and reevaluate as needed
This may be everyone's least favorite part. You have to be realistic. Unfortunately you may not be able to immediately start waking up at 5:30AM if you are currently sleeping in till 10AM every single day. Same with going to the gym 4x per week consistently, if you aren’t going to the gym at all now, let’s maybe reign it in a bit and go with 2 days a week to start off.
I am absolutely not saying you are unable to reach those end goals BUT being realistic with a starting point will ultimately put you in a better headspace and you will be much more successful in the long run, trust me.DEFINE YOUR WHY. You will not always be motivated, most people are not. It may look like it on the outside when people are able to stick to their routines day in and day out but motivation is fleeting. You need to remember why these goals are so important to you so that even when life is stressful and you are tired or sad or frustrated that you do not stop and quit.
You are fully capable of doing hard things and challenging yourself. Remember why you set out to accomplish these goals in the first place and hold yourself to it.To bring it all together, you need to set a timeline. Some goals are short, some are extremely long with mini goals rolled in. Be realistic in determining how long these will take you. This can always be adjusted as well.
Maybe you are exceeding your own expectations and are stronger than you thought and while you wanted to be able to do an unassisted pull up by the end of the year, it's looking like you are going to hit that goal in August. Then to make it even more challenging, from August - December your goal is 10 unassisted!
Maybe in a series of unfortunate events, life got stressful, work got busy, you got an injury, etc. and while your goal was to get into the gym 4x per week by June, it just did not happen. You readjust and redefine your goals and now you get right back to it, and by the end of November you have been in the gym 4x per week for 3 months straight.
To show you how this can all come together, I will tell you one of my own goals I am setting:
“I would like to read 12 books by the end of 2025 by reading one book per month. I would like to read more to help decrease my screen time, reduce my anxiety, improve my vocabulary and help me to relax and decompress. I was able to read 8 books in 2024 so I feel this is a realistic, yet challenging goal for myself personally.”
I cannot wait to hear all the goals you guys are striving for in the new year. You can do this!
