http://www.tastesofhealth.eu/2016/01/new-years-resolutions-how-to-set-goals.html

New Year's Resolutions - how to set goals [and stick to them for life]?

www.tastesofhealth.eu

We all know people who every year make new year’s resolutions. We all know people who every year make the same new year’s resolutions. We even may

belong to that group. Why can we never reach these goals?

The answer to this question is not easy. For some of us having new year’s resolutions might be sort of a tradition: we set them every year (without even thinking too much about them) because everyone else does. Some of us are full

of energy and good will in January therefore right at the beginning we work religiously on meeting our resolutions, but as time passes we are less and less

enthusiastic about them. But why? Are our goals simply too ambitious or does

http://www.tastesofhealth.eu/2016/01/new-years-resolutions-how-to-set-goals.html

lack of motivation hinder our success?

Making a change is difficult but making many big changes at the same time

is extremely difficult, thus maybe it is better to start with one or a maximum of two small amendments to our life. So if we want to

improve our diet, instead of avoiding junk food completely, let’s start with quitting only biscuits or crisps. This should be so much easier to achieve from one hand and from the other – once we are successful – it will motivate us to

doing more.

Organizing a support system might also be helpful in achieving our goal. So if we are, for instance, eliminating crisps from our diet, it is better to avoid the temptation and simply not to have any at home. Additionally, once we tell our

family and friends about our resolution, not only will they not offer any crisps to us, but we may feel more obliged to stick to this plan as we want to avoid

embarrassment of admitting to failure.

Once the goal is chosen, we have to set the start date for realizing the plan. Any day is good enough as long as it is realistic. Beginning our adventure with outdoor jogging in winter when it is cold and icy is not the best idea since we will

probably very quickly start looking for excuses not to go outside. But when we do start, it is important to keep a record of how we do in realizing our plan.

For instance, writing down daily or weekly in a calendar time spent on exercising will make us feel great and even more motivated when we do well. And when we don’t achieve the planned hours, we will be able to easily notice that, think about

the reasons and adjust the workout plans accordingly. So if we were to, for example, workout 3 times per week in the evening in a gym but we end up going

only once because we are too tired, going there in the morning or exercising at home will resolve that problem.

When we accomplish our goals we will already feel wonderful but why not celebrate the success in a special way that will make us want to achieve even

more? We can for instance reward ourselves with a small gift whenever we lose 2kg or reach planned hours of workout in a month. Obviously the reward

shouldn’t undermine the achievements thus celebrating the first month without biscuits with a huge cake is not the best idea!

However, after the celebration there is still a lot of hard work because we want to make sure that whatever we have achieved is a permanent change for life.

It probably will not be easy but writing down how this change has improved our life and how great we feel about it will certainly help. And keeping on eliminating the tempting triggers (biscuits, crisps, easy excuses) is very important too.

Having read this post, now you may think it is a few weeks too late. But I feel

you have read it just in time. If you have already given up on fulfilling your new year’s resolutions as they seemed unachievable, hopefully after reading this post

you will get back to them. Maybe you will adjust them so they are not that demanding, or maybe you will concentrate just on one goal remembering that small improvement is better than no improvement. And if you haven’t set

your resolutions yet, now with this newly gained insight, it is going to be so much easier.

And it really doesn’t matter the New Year was a few weeks ago because nobody

said you have to wait for New Year to improve your life.