Making Sustainable Change in the New Year
Focusing on avoiding common pitfalls within New Year's Resolutions
Let’s chat about setting sustainable goals for this New Year and how to create actional change in your day-to-day lifestyle so we don’t fall into the average image of the New Year Resolutioner. We all see the “new year, new me” posts which end up not sticking past the month of January or even past the first 2 weeks of the month. There are a plethora of reasons for this, so I’ll look to discuss the main reasons and how can avoid these common pitfalls so we can make real changes in your life and help achieve the goals that you are looking for. These primary hang ups that we see are: the overly aggressive all in approach that many people take, not making the change based on an internal desire to better themselves, not having enough direction and setting themselves up for failure from the start. These are the primary reasons that I see people failing which typically extends into other factors that they may say as to why they had fallen off.
Tackling the overly aggressive approach, this is typically when people dive all in, give themselves no out, believe that it is important for them to be going to the gym five days a week and sticking to an overly strict and restrictive diet program, all about cutting out different things leaving them without the belief that they have the ability to live their life. My focus has always been about breaking down barriers for entry while this approach is all about setting up barriers and creating parameters for failure as opposed to seeking parameters for success. This simple mindset shift can be a huge factor in the ability to maintain motivation and discipline going forward. Nobody likes to feel like they have failed something so setting up so many ways to fail is only going to make sure that you tick off one of them, then once you have failed one it sets up the mentality that you have already failed one so none of the others matter. Going in with a growth mindset and setting up the ideas of success gives you something to work toward as opposed to lofty standards that you know out the gate will be unsustainable.
This growth mindset that we were talking about also transfers into the true desires of people starting this journey. Different people can have different motivations that stick but the ones that are truly founded in bettering themselves are the ones that stick around the longest. If you are in it to impress other people or have it linked to an outside goal, it is bound to make motivation fall sooner. Then when the motivation leaves, it becomes really hard to find the discipline needed to stay committed, and then it falls back into the original cycle. If we focus on a true intrinsic reasoning or long-term mindset where we are focused on settling into a routine and growing with it. This is one of the best tools that we can use to help this stick. Having a personalized reason that extends past a number goal such as chasing how exercise makes you feel, being able to keep up with your kids, focused on getting stronger, or having more energy throughout the day so you can make it through an entire day. Establishing an internal reasoning or a “why” statement as I like to call it, makes it so those days when motivation is waning or when you’re really not feeling it come that much easier. You can repeat that “why” statement to yourself and establish a reason to keep showing up for yourself. The power of this intrinsic motivation can’t be understated as it can quickly turn those “defeats” when you feel like you’re not being consistent and sticking to it, to giving you a reason to be consistent as well as the growth-based mindset where we just try to show up for yourself and get slightly better each time that you show up.
Lastly, the other most common thing people do this time of year is not set themselves up for success. They come up with the idea of making all these changes, and have the goal set that they want to achieve, but don’t come up with a realistic and actionable plan on how to attain the goal that they set out to get. A crucial piece of this is a realistic plan. Being real with yourself in what your ability is, even undershooting it a bit to leave room to grow and you’re confident that you’re working in your ability and what you can confidently commit to. Setting yourself realistic goals that you can commit to, leads into the exact other topics that we have spoken about. It helps us with that growth-based mindset as opposed to shooting too high and coming up short leading to that feeling of failure. It is far better to establish a routine, that you can stick to, no matter how little it is, but starting it and setting a baseline of things you enjoy doing. Then build off of the routine set to expand the amount of activity that you are capable of handling. With this in mind it is easy to see how people jump in deep, do way too much to start, then end up getting too sore, spending too much time at the gym, or not properly managing their rest. All this fatigue and frustration will build up and make them quickly fall off and come up with excuses such as no time, no energy, and they can’t handle getting that sore. When in reality you can almost completely stop getting sore and manage your time properly with a good plan in place that allows you to grow with it as your base of activity expands.
To recap, a New Year’s resolution is just a wish unless we establish an actionable plan to follow through with the goals. There are pitfalls that we run into and knowing what they are makes it easier to plan to avoid them. Avoiding these makes it significantly easier to make an effective lifestyle change. They all go hand in hand with each other, but the things that we see posted all over social media is quite the opposite of what we just spoke about. They preach the hustle mindset, all in and if you fall off then you might as well not do so. When in reality, we know that life happens and we cannot force your life around your fitness, but we can make your fitness work around your life.
If you found this useful and provided some insight please share it around to somebody who might need to hear it. If you have any questions, need clarity, or a topic that you want me to discuss send it my way. You can contact me by email at sidneyabartlett@gmail.com
Until next time,
Sidney Bartlett, CSCS