It’s that time of year again! Tis the season for reinventing ourselves, setting goals, resolutions and intentions to become all that we want to be. We might have new ones this year or recycled ones from last year, but this is the year we’re actually going to succeed. We’re going to follow through with our resolutions! We can’t possibly fail this time, right?!
Did you know that 43% of people that make resolutions give up on them by the end of January? Only about 9% follow through with their resolutions completely. That doesn’t seem too promising if you ask me. However, I don’t think that these statistics are an indicator of people not being able to make changes in their lives or not having what it takes to make improvements. I think there are several factors that have a big impact on if we feel successful or not. One of the biggest factors is how we think about and go about making changes in our lives.
Want to know why you should ditch the resolutions and how it might lead to a more successful path for you? Keep reading!
What Ditching Resolutions Does for Us
Mindset of Success
When we adopt an extreme mindset around something, like going all in because of our resolutions, it can be really difficult to maintain that mindset, focus and effort. Sure, in the beginning it can be exciting and motivating, but as life unfolds around us we’ll always have other things that will need our focus as well. These may even cause opposition to the new goal we’re working toward.
Let’s say you have the goal to get more sleep consistently for the next month. You start off doing great! You’ve gotten 8 hours each night for a whole week. But then, one of your kids gets sick and keeps you up late or wakes you throughout the night. You didn’t get the sleep you had planned on, but did you fail? Technically, yes. But, in reality, no! Life happens! We have to work around things we can’t control and remember that not being perfect doesn’t mean we failed. If we go along with the “all or nothing” thinking, we’d be done at this point. We’d consider ourselves failures and give up.
Realistic Goals
Sure, it’s fine to have big dreams and great things you want to accomplish, but that doesn’t mean that you have to wait until you reach them to feel successful. Just because you haven’t crossed the finish line doesn’t mean you’ve done nothing. If we don’t break our goals down into smaller goals along the way to the big goal, we’re more likely to feel like it will never happen, that it’s too far out of reach. When we celebrate the wins we have throughout the journey, it keeps us motivated and moving forward. Acknowledging progress, even the little things, feels good! Self improvement should feel good!
Breaking goals down into simple action steps that are realistic will get you where you want to be a lot faster than reaching for a goal that is overwhelming and requires a lot of changes to your daily life. Keep it simple for sustainability
Striking a Balance
If we don’t ditch the resolutions and stick with the “all or nothing” mentality, we believe we need to constantly focus and be making progress toward the goal we’ve set for ourselves or else we are failing. As mentioned above, we’re human and things happen. It’s pretty much impossible to always do things exactly right. We need to allow for things to not always work out exactly how we planned. We need to allow ourselves flexibility. Have a plan B or take a break when needed. Progress is still progress, even when we don’t take perfect actions.
When we ditch the resolutions, we take the pressure off ourselves to be perfect. We don’t have to beat ourselves up just because we’re not.
Self Care Instead of Rigid Rules
Rigid rules are made to be broken. They are unsustainable! They don’t help us get where we want to be, they just stress us out and make us feel like we failed when we can’t follow them completely and consistently. We’re much more likely to succeed if we don’t create extra stress and frustration. Instead of creating strict rules, how about creating guidelines on how to care for ourselves mentally and physically.
Guidance is always more helpful than demands, whether they come from ourselves or someone else. Demands tend to bring out the rebel in us, even when they’re self imposed. Flexible guidelines allow us to hold on to our self-esteem while we work towards what we want. It allows us to feel a sense of care and nurturing instead of a required punishment or chore.
Our lives change and our bodies need different things on different days. It makes more sense to become more aware of what our bodies are telling us, so we can begin to provide ourselves what we truly need. That is not going to work if we’re just following some plan or rules, especially when we’re following someone else’s advice.
Healthy Perspective
When we are working on a goal that has to do with improving our health, we need to keep the big picture in mind. Of course you have ideas about what success looks like for you and deep down what you really want is to feel better in and about your body so you can improve you’re quality of life. Lots of people have goals of eating healthier or getting more exercise. They might create goals like eating a salad every day or going to the gym x amount of days per week.
It’s great to create action steps as long as you’re feeling good about them in the process. The journey to better health shouldn’t feel like a torturous endeavor that you’ve been made to suffer through. It should feel like a journey of healing and learning. It’s self improvement, not punishment, after all. It’s learning what works for you and your body and creating the life you enjoy living.
You might find that the easiest path to success is to ignore all the outside messages about what healthy looks like and what you need to do to get there and instead tune into what that actually means for you. Getting healthier isn’t a one size fits all. The path will be unique to everyone. We all have to start from where we are now and what we need.
Letting Go of The Resolution Trap
I call resolutions a trap because that’s what it is. It’s enticing because it seems like a plan, something to follow, as your roadmap to success. It’s motivating in the beginning. But then, we quickly realize that putting pressure on ourselves to act perfectly, to make it work at all costs isn’t the way to get where we want to go. It’s stressful, unsustainable, makes us feel like a failure and leads us to believe that improving our health is either impossible or has to feel like torture to work.
Ditching the resolutions let’s us create a journey towards success that’s doable and enjoyable. We learn that progress over time is what’s truly important, as well as learning what works for us as individuals. We are not failures, we are imperfect humans. Our mindset and beliefs can set us up to feel like failures or feel like we are learning and growing as we reach toward our dreams and aspirations.
I’d love to know, will you be able to ditch the resolutions?
Do you need guidance on how to create your unique path to success when it comes to feeling comfortable in and about your body?
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