New Year’s Resolutions
A brief look at how you can keep going throughout the year with your New Year resolutions, whatever they may be.
Well it has been a few weeks now since the New Year.How are you getting on with your New Years resolutions?
Let us make this the year where they do not become yet another failed list of hopes and dreams which have hopelessly been dumped at the side of the road we call life!.
The top ten that spring into mind are:
- Quit smoking
- Loose weight
- Get fitter
- Cut back on alcohol
- Sort out finances
- Live more in the moment enjoying life in the here and now
- Be more helpful, whether that is doing voluntary work or helping an old person cross the road
- Get a new hobby or learn something which helps us on the career ladder
- Spend more time with friends or family
- And on top of it all get more organized so that you can fit all the above in!
Doesn’t it just sound like a huge list of how the perfect human being should be living their life to fit in with what society today expects of us? No wonder half of us fail by February, and diminish our self esteem in the process!
Most of us have made one or even all of these resolutions in the past. Whether you are a seasoned resolutioner or given up making resolutions from past experience.
Why is it we seem to fail so quickly?
I think it is because we just stab in the dark at what we are really wanting from the resolution. We loosely know what we want, but we do not really pay it much attention. For example we say we want to loose weight. Do we have a goal in mind or have we said it on the spur of the moment?
For us to do anything we need to have a rough idea of what we want and what direction we need to go in for this to happen. If the goal is to loose four stone because you are a little over weight and it would bring you back into the “normal” range of what is healthy for you height and build. This isn’t going to happen over night. It is not even going to happen in one month or two as the amount you want to loose is too much. Guidelines set out by the General Medical Council say “a healthy amount of weight to loose per week is two pounds” and most of the slimming clubs work on this basis.
To get from 14 stone down to 10 you would have to loose 56 lbs to reach your goal. If you are lucky to loose the two pounds a week without any plateau or unintentionally putting any weight on then it would take you 28 weeks to reach your goal. Looking at your goal like this is going to make you decide that it isn’t even worth the effort to start or as soon as you hit a sticky patch you stick your hands up in the air and say that it is useless as you are a failure and can’t do it. So for it to become an achievable goal you would be better to look at it from another prospective.
Ok, so eventually you would like to loose the four stone, but let us think of a closer goal which will help you stay on track to achieving your bigger dream goal. Because at the moment that is what it is, a dream. To make it a reality you need smaller goals to keep up your enthusiasm of the bigger less obtainable goal. If the safe amount to loose weight is two pounds a week, then that equates to 16 lbs every four weeks and an even closer goal to achieve is the 2 lbs a week. This makes the larger goal of four stone now an achievable 2 lbs a week to accomplish.
So by focusing on the much more achievable goal of two pounds a week you end up taking your weight loss week by week and do not feel a failure as you get closer and closer to the bigger dream goal of what you actually want to achieve.
This principle is the same for all the goals you want to achieve. If you start off on your ultimate goal then look at what SMALL achievable steps or goals you can make on your way to the bigger goal and for the moment throw the main goal out of your mind and concentrate on the smaller goals. You would have your New Years resolution still intact and made it a part of your lifestyle so it won’t appear again on your list of New Years resolutions list.
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