7 Pieces of Advice for NY Resolutions
New Year Resolutions. Where do you stand with them? Do they motivate you and give you purpose? Do they stress you the F out and do more harm than good? Or are you completely indifferent? Personally, I love a good NY resolution! Over the years I’ve learned how to carefully straddle the line of motivation and stress. I have 7 suggestions to help you do just that. We’re all ready to say buh-bye to 2020, so why not welcome in 2021 with some intention and direction!
If you generally have a hard time with setting and attaining goals, my first piece of advice is this: Do not take a very large goal and expect or convince yourself that it can to be done in 365 days. One year is really not a lot of time—especially in the world of big goals. If you don’t get it done by December 31, guess what? The next year will start and your resolution will still be there. My personal intention at the end of the year is to be in a much better place than I was on January 1. In regards to my goals, I want to have:
Proof that I’m beyond where I started
Tangible results from all my hard work
An appreciation of everything I learned while working towards it
Pride that I consistently worked on it throughout the entire year
Motivation to keep at it
Second: If your goal is the same every year, adjust it. Let’s be real, something isn’t working. If this past year has taught me anything, it’s that taking care of my physical, mental, and emotional health is MOST important. It determines how I show up for everyone and everything in my life. Maybe you haven’t accomplished your goal yet because your approach is all wrong. Keep in mind that it should nourish and energize your soul! Achieving it should make you and your life better. Cut below the surface and go straight to the heart of WHY you want it? Instead of lose weight, how about be healthier so I can be around for my family longer, have more energy for things I enjoy doing, feel more confident in my clothes, or love who I see in the mirror. What will accomplishing your goal provide for you? Make THAT your objective.
My third piece of advice: Plan for life to happen. While you’re over there trying to crush your goal, the rest of your life hasn’t stopped. And when life surprises you, it has a tendency to derail, slow down, or even bring your goal to a complete stop. Ummmmm, kinda like this year. Life completely surprised us. It threw us a few major curve balls. While you can’t always plan for life, you can give yourself a little more wiggle room for things that pop up unexpectedly. This give you extra time for surprises, mistakes, adjustments, and getting your head right after allowing your inner voice to wreak havoc for too long. If you think it will take you 5 weeks to achieve something, give yourself 7. A little cushion is good. Here’s the best part . . . if you kick so much ass that you finish before your allotted time, you will feel amazing. So be reasonable all around—especially with your timing.
Next, I would suggest putting in some work on the front end. Not everyone can set a goal, hit the ground running, and be successful without pre-planning. Sit down and spend some time with it.
Write it down. Be clear and specific about the details. Maybe journal about it. Use the following questions as your guide. Why do you want to achieve it? What is it going to provide you? How hard will you have to work? What are you willing to do? How bad do you want it? What will you have to give up? What are the obstacles and how will you overcome them? What is it going to look like once you have it? What will happen if you don’t achieve it?
Break your goal into much smaller goals. Write the main goal at the top of the page and then lay everything out (step by step) that you’re going to have to do in order to accomplish the larger goal. Think in terms of a recipe. In order to cook scrambled eggs, you must first pull the egg out, crack it into a bowl, whisk it, etc.
Lay out all the smaller goals on a timeline across the entire year. Be reasonable. Instead of doing it in your desired time frame, opt for one that honestly makes the most sense with your schedule and motivation. Remember, plan for life to happen. If throughout the year, you reach your notch on the timeline and you aren’t where you thought you would be. Just push that shit back! Maybe re-evaluate the rest of your timeline. If you’re ahead, don’t slow down because you have extra time! Stay ahead in case a big life event happens later to slow you back down.
My fifth piece of advice is this: WHEN you get off track (because you will), just start again as soon as you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s a day, a week, or 2 months later. We’ve all said something like this to ourselves, “Well, I haven’t been on top of it for (enter time frame) so I might as well give up.” How in the hell does that make sense? Soooo because you haven’t been doing it perfectly, you should throw away all of your hard work thus far and forget about it. Listen to me, perfectionism is the biggest killer of goals. I am a perfectionist. It slows me down. But you better fucking believe I don’t allow it to win. I cannot expect to be 100% every single day. Remember, life happens. Whenever I notice I’m slacking, I make the choice to start over right then. If I have missed a day or a week, so what? Missing a day or a week is much better than missing an entire month or year because the idea of doing it perfectly (which no one can do) has my head twisted.
Number six: Prepare for it to be hard because it will be. It’s supposed to be. If it wasn’t, everyone would be doing it. Being mentally and emotionally prepared is your biggest ally. There will be moments you’re crushing and moments you’re slacking. We’re not robots. If we were, we could just power through with no problem. We’re humans and this is all part of our human experience. To know and expect that it’s going to be challenging is half the battle. Then it’s just reminding yourself when you feel the discomfort and pressure that 1.) it’s normal to feel this way 2.) you have the choice to keep going.
My last piece of advice is: Choose an accountability partner. Accountability helps you make consistent, steady progress. If you know that someone is going to check in with you, you are twice as likely to stay on track. Plus, we dislike letting others down! Choose this person wisely. Make sure it’s someone who will be firm, but also honest, positive, motivating, and considerate. A person who is too hard will make your experience stressful. A person who is too soft will bend easily. Both will have the opposite effect. For example, choose someone who has similar goals, who is really good at achieving their own goals, or who holds people accountable for a living (a life coach . . . duh).
Things aren’t going back to normal once January 1, 2021, rolls around. Having a goal to focus on (personal or professional) can be a good distraction. Life will always be hard so plan for it to disrupt your goal, but don’t allow it to completely derail it. As you sit down with some possible goals for this coming year, I hope some of my advice is helpful. But I really hope you find something that excites you, provides meaning, and brings you joy. Cheers to making it through this crazy, weird year. An even bigger cheers for what you create for yourself in the next year . . . even if 2021 has its own set of crazy and weird.
