New year, new you
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Rachel LeBeane
Breeze-Courier Writer
With a new year, many of us make resolutions. The most common resolutions made by us Americans are exercising more, losing weight, and getting organized. Some people will add quitting smoking on their list if they are smokers. As you can see, most of these resolutions are aimed at improving ourselves. Which is a good thing! I think trying to improve yourself is a healthy mindset. The problem with this is many of us make resolutions with no plans on how to make them come true. It is easy to say you plan to start exercising and lose weight, but not so easy to get started.
According to Business Insider, there are three reasons why these new year resolutions fail. Reason number one is that the resolution is not specific enough. It is easy to say I am going to exercise more, but what if I said instead I was going to train to run a 5K by spring? That’s more goal-oriented and will give me motivation to keep going. I have a goal and will follow the steps to make it to that goal. If a 5K is too much, set a more reasonable goal like trying to walk five miles a day. Once that goal has been reached, build upon it to keep your success going. By setting specific goals and following them, it is easier for you to maintain the healthy habits you wanted to build with the original resolution of ‘exercising more and losing weight.’
Knowing yourself will also help. Are you the type of person who has a calendar filled with events and details you must attend to? Schedule in your exercises. If you see it every day in your planner, you are more likely to do it. I know I am a planner, and I have the same basic schedule every day. It makes it easier for me to follow through on exercise goals if it is built into my day to day life.
Reason number two for most resolutions to fail is that they are made with negative language. For example, if your resolution is to stop wasting money, that is negative language. This languages causes you to think about the money more, making you more anxious about it and causing the resolution to become a source of stress for you. Business Insider suggests laying out your resolutions in positive language instead.
Instead of saying ‘stop wasting money,’ try saying ‘save money for vacation.’ The positive words and enjoyable outcome will make you more likely to reach your goal. Plus, with a specific saving goal in mind, it also becomes a specific resolution. As we already know, when you have a specific goal in mind, it makes it easier to achieve. If you want to save for a grand vacation, then take a look at your budget each month. How much can you set aside for your vacation, and how much will it cost? Once you have that figured out, you’ll start to look forward to dropping money in the vacation fund.
The third and final reason a resolution fails is because it isn’t about you. “But wait,” you say, “I made this goal myself. How can it not be about me?” To this, Business Insider says that many new year goals don’t actually reflect what people really want, but rather what is the current trend. This is most often seen in diet and exercise resolutions. Are you trying the Keto diet because you believe in it completely and know it will work with your lifestyle, or just because your favorite celebrity shed the pounds using it? Did you do Zoomba because you enjoy it and want to keep doing to the classes, or because your best friend went once and had fun? If you think other people expect you to take up a certain diet or exercise trends, then you are setting yourself up for failure. Just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you.
Each person is unique. Your lifestyle and health all dictate what you can and cannot do. You may be pushed by friends or family to try the newest quick weight loss plan, but stick with what you know works. It might be impossible for you to do Keto or Zoomba, and that is okay. Some of us have bad knees or special diets, and we should not judge ourselves by the successes of others. Find an exercise you will continue and a diet you can follow. It does not have to be flashy or written about in a New York Times best seller. Sometimes simple is better.
Armed now with the knowledge of how to make your new year resolutions stick, let’s start out this year right. Set attainable goals for yourself. Lets make 2022 the year you do what you once thought was impossible. It doesn’t have to be a big change. Take things slow. Build a solid foundation of little successes and I bet you will soon find yourself achieving more than you ever thought you could before. Make this new year the one where you debut the new you.
