Mindset Refocus This Holiday Season
Helping re-establish our why heading into the new year
As the holiday season is here and in full force, it is a good time for us to chat about what is important for us during this journey. Things that can really help us or hinder us in our progress forward. Having a goal in mind is always where we should base our decisions around, will this help me get to my goal? Will this hurt me in getting to my goal? Easy guiding principles for everything, but this all gets a bit more muddy as we look truly at what our goals are. During the end of the year, as we get closer to the new year, it is a very good time to do some introspective thinking, reframe our goal, and focus and what it is that we truly want to accomplish and why we are jumping in on this journey. I want to highlight today those who just want to live a better, more active life.
Many people are on this journey because they want to be more healthy to live longer, to be there for their kids or grandkids, and to enjoy sports and the outdoors, so many different reasons to embark on the journey. But for many people, this boils down to making sure that you are living your best life. People this time of year get very caught up in trying to stick too focused to a diet plan or a training plan. Consistency is arguably the most important and truly what makes everything work, which I will talk a bit deeper into in another week. I want to highlight the importance of living your life and straying a bit from the strict nature that it can feel like with these goals to highlight being present with your family and friends. One of the easiest ways to fall off the rails is to make yourself feel isolated, going to gatherings and looking at all the treats that were brought or all the meals that your friends worked hard on and thinking to yourself “Oh that doesn’t fit in my plan so I can’t eat it.” This can quickly build up some resentment which then causes a vicious spiral of saying screw the plan, indulging, feeling as if you’ve already broken it so why would you stop indulging, and leading down a complete fall off of a plan. Or the converse where you feel extreme guilt in either side of the situation, slightly breaking plan so you feel guilt in that regard or guilt that your family and friends worked hard on treats that you believe you can’t enjoy. Just never something that you want to be experiencing.
This leads us to the take-aways and what we can do about it. The best thing is to work on shifting your mindset. Health and wellness, like you have heard a million times, isn’t a quick fix jump in, jump out. It is a lifelong journey of maintaining and growing. Shifting your mindset to the long term will help us break down these phases of life into more manageable sections, understanding it isn’t about forcing life to work around our health goals but making sure our health goals work around the aspects of life. Life throws hardships at you and life brings people together, embracing those moments of getting together and accepting that they will be okay and are encouraged, it makes it much easier to accept that you’re not going to be perfect all the time. If you fall off for a few days because you were spending time with family, know that the work you’ve put in will always be there, if something took months to build up, it won’t go away in a few days off. You’re building this healthy lifestyle change so you can live your life better, so why would you be guilty for spending time enjoying life, when that is the whole point of the journey in the first place!
This is the first post in a bi-weekly newsletter that I want to be working on with the focus of making fitness more understandable, sustainable, and help provide perspective and understanding in the wild world of fitness. 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 along my way. You can contact me by email at sidneyabartlett@gmail.com
Until next time,
Sidney Bartlett, CSCS