New Year Fresh Start
The ball dropped, the calendars flipped, time moved into a new year, a new decade. The newness of it all can feel so motivating. We get to start fresh, start over. We get to put aside the failings, the short falls, of the 2000’s and start the 2020’s with a clean slate. What are you hoping to accomplish? What goals are you setting? Where is your motivation leading you? What are the strengths you want to kick ass in this year?
I am usually not a huge fan of the New Years Resolutions. The “I’m going to lose 10 pounds by February.” The “I’m going to workout every day this year.” The “I’m going to make all my meals at home.” There is so much more to the new year than goals that feel more like chores than challenges. If you are one of those, more power to you and your resolutions. After January 1 2020, change the world, change yourself and maybe even move mountains. But the reality is that sometimes we go too big, we go too hard. We think that the person we’ve never been is going to a better person, a better of version of who we are. We forget to check in with ourselves over the process. We forget to check in with our friends and family and make sure that they want to stand by our changes. We give up on some of our strengths to sacrifice the short term and usually short lived resolutions. We may lost the 10 pounds, but a lot of times we gain back 15. We may workout everyday for two or three weeks and then find that our energy level drops, or an injury side lines us. And ultimately, we end up struggling with our desire to reach these goals, we end up losing some of our enthusiasm to recreate the habits we found destructive in the pervious year. It takes a lot to make changes.
Remember, those goals, those resolutions, they take sacrifices. They take drive and motivation. They take away from our time and energy. They take away social outings and romantic dates. Eating separate meals than your family is isolating. Going to the gym on a weekend when your family or friends gather is secluding. Cooking at home when your co workers are headed out for food can feel lonely. Sometimes we expect all other aspects of our life, our work, our family, our friends to jump on board. To jump into our resolutions with the same optimism that we have.
My suggestion, try setting resolutions that build habits. Look at your resolutions as building blocks. Don’t try to perfect them, try to live them. Start with little things and make long term habits out of them. And for the big goals, try a week or 30 days and then reevaluate after that. Meal plan and prep before each week for as long as you can. Go to the gym four times a week for a month. Check back in and adjust and adapt based on your progress. Check in with the people around you, see if they can help and support you. One of the things that we seem to lose is asking our support network to support us. These people can help you see progress when you don’t. Maybe the progress is in your weight, or your pocket book. Sometimes the changes we are experiencing are too small for us to see, too personal for us to recognize.
In life we aren’t perfect. Some days we are late for our workouts, some days we have chocolate just because. Some days we feel like getting out of bed and off to work took all our motivations out of us. We can feel like failures and feel frustrated by our short comings. Go back to the basics and be your own best friend. Those aren’t the days to focus on perfection. Those aren’t the days to throw in the towel on your resolutions. Those are the days to give yourself a hug, an extra cup of coffee and finish the night with a nice IPA. And when the next day arrives, remind yourself to get back to it. One day is not going to ruin any of your progress. One day might even help give your mind and body a much needed break.
This year, we get to start a new decade. We get to look ahead, not just at the year, but at the next ten years. I have no idea where I will be next year and ten years down the road is a lifetime that will have many bumps and forks. But the freshness of the calendar, the newness of the time ahead, is giving me some much needed motivation to evaluate where I am and start setting little goals to build a stronger person. One of my goals is to journal everyday. But I don’t expect to be perfect, I just expect to be better than I was last year. And going into my second week of daily journaling, I’ve already accomplished that goal.