5 Ways to Start your New Year’s Wellness Resolutions off Right: Part 1
“Each day is a new beginning, the chance to do with it what should be done and not to be seen as simply another day to put in time.” — Catherine Pulsifer
Are you eagerly awaiting the new year, so you can start those resolutions you’ve been envisioning for yourself? Are you interested in starting something new in your wellness journey?
It can be as simple as buying fresh pumpkin and carving it instead of buying canned for upcoming holiday dishes. Or it can be as complex as working on your patience.
Regardless, there are plenty of ways to ensure you start off on the right foot.
1. BEGIN EARLY
People usually wait until the stroke of midnight, December 31st, to begin their goals. It’s symbolic: new slate for the new calendar year.
We want to ritualize the change and spend a whole day, weekend, or week during vacation focused solely on the new goal. We become convinced we must be ready to start, worthy of the goal we want to reach, before attempting it.
The results? Over 1/3 of resolutions fail before January is through. 1
We also like starting during this time because it’s during holidays. We know how much life can get in the way, how easy we can get sidetracked. So, we try and push our goals to fit intensely into the short periods of time available during vacation.
While vacationing in the Philippines, I came across an article about a silent retreat. As I read, I kept getting drawn in (especially the part about meals being provided). I imagined myself keeping to the schedule, telling myself, “I gotta go to one of these!” Later, I had another thought: “Why can’t I do the schedule myself?” I was excited about the feelings and experiences I could have, so I just internalized the experience. I knew I wouldn’t be able to religiously keep the schedule, both because of my own discipline and the demands of life, even on vacation, but I figured the mindset is what matters. If I followed the schedule as much as possible, easing into the 2-block chunks of meditations, substituting some of them with 2-hour writing blocks, it could still work.
In the same way, internalizing the calendar and resetting it each day is a much more useful perspective for beginning a New Year’s Resolution. Starting during stresses and responsibilities, with jumpstarts and off days, is still starting. You still journey in the direction of your goals. Keep coming back to the excitement of doing the thing that achieving your goal entails, just as a meditator keeps coming back to her breath as her mind begins to wander to stray thoughts. We don’t have to wait until bills are paid, the house is clean, or a new year to get started.
2. PRIORITIZE
Another way to ensure you’re starting the new year right is to ask yourself how much you really want to achieve the goal you’re setting for yourself. A lot of times, we find life gets hectic and tell ourselves we don’t have time to work towards our dreams. Here, I find photographer and artist Chase Jarvis’ perspective illuminating. “Replace the words ‘I don’t have time’ with ‘It’s not a priority for me right now.’” 2 The next time someone invites you to the gym, and you’re about to talk about how much other things you’re swamped with, catch yourself. The reality is you don’t really want to go to the gym.
Ask yourself why you want to get healthy. Is it because you want to be a more well and balanced version of yourself? Or do you want to impress someone by being able to do a crazy yoga pose?
Going back to the idea of beginning your resolution early, when you stop yourself from beginning by telling yourself there’s only a few more months left until the end of the year, that you’ll just make your goal your New Year’s Resolution, that’s when you should seriously question your motivations for pursuing your goal in the first place. If it’s truly important to you, in the words of my wise dad, you’ll “make the time.” Amid traffic jams, replying to emails, meal prepping, and meetings, you’ll find a way to start if it’s important enough to you.
3. SHIFT YOUR SELF-TALK
You make a goal of losing weight. Then, the next day is another long day of work where you just want to eat quick and go to bed. You’re suddenly craving that triple chocolate cake too much to resist. Then, after indulging, you are not feeling the gym. Instead, you sit down in the recliner and turn on Netflix. You convince yourself that the gym must not be for you, that it’s always too crowded, loud, and annoying there, anyway. The instructors are boring. It’s not clean. You don’t feel the overall vibe. What you deserve is some much-needed relaxation. You need to recharge for next day’s grind, after all. Then you wake up next morning, feeling groggy and with neck and back pain. You re-promise yourself that tonight will be the night to have a nice salad bowl and exercise. But first, there’s another big day at work. You decide to start things off right by getting the latte with all the trimmings at Starbucks on the way in.
See how powerful the words we tell ourselves can be?! While there is much to be said about toxic environments (see our article Destigmatizing Mental Wellness: Be Equipped and Informed to hear more), in a lot of cases, we can control and manage our situations through a simple mindset shift.
It’s easy to see the immediate pleasures of indulgence. The smell of the cake is enticing. What’s harder is to remember the last time you got a cake and then felt bloated and blah for a good while after.
Inversely, immediately after a workout, you may be wheezing and sweating everywhere, maybe even feeling like throwing up. You may think, “I’m never going to torture myself like that again.” But, instead, try understanding how you feel. Internally, for the rest of the day, how are your energy levels? How are your thoughts? Do you even need coffee? Externally, too, run your hands across your body. Feel that leanness starting to form. Then, the next time you feel like skipping a workout or craving for something creamy and heavy, try and bring up that leanness, that newfound energy and thinking capability. They can become triggers, reminding you of your higher priorities. If we shift our thinking and self-talk more long-term, it can help us avoid indulgences.
4. GO STEP-BY-STEP
We can all go to the gym once, have a healthy salad for one lunch. But how can you continue during life’s demands? Everyone is different. Some people can jump into complex steps and habits right away and continue them no matter what life throws their way. More likely, it can take years, after many setbacks, to reach goals. Even Lewis Howes, author of School of Greatness, started out “terrified of public speaking [but] found a Toastmasters meeting nearby. He attended every single week for a year. By the end of the year he had overcome his fear of public speaking.” 3
One thing that I found works is creating small, achievable habits. Journaling every morning after waking up, I list a mantra I want to focus on, 3 things I’m grateful for, and 3 mini-goals that are related to a bigger goal. I began journaling at the beginning of this year and still don’t do it every day, but I am more consistent now than just 3 months back.
Besides starting with something small and building it up, another option is to break a big goal down into smaller ones. Instead of making a commitment to going vegan, start with adding more veggies to each meal. Then, cut out one portion of meat from one meal. Go from there, stepwise. Once you’re good enough at one thing, branch out to other areas you think you need to work on.
5. SACRIFICE
This is where things get hard. If you reimagine that cake craving and Netflix watching, it’s easy to think just sacrificing indulgences will be enough. This could be the case. However, without knowing more, it’s hard to see if other distractions may not arise to take the place. Or even if they’re distractions. Maybe the gym is your real distraction.
Knowing what to sacrifice is central to the 5th and final way of starting your resolution off right. In Part 2 of this series, we take a surgical look at what to really part with to make room to begin your new year well.
References
1 https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/will-your-resolutions-last-to-february/?_r=0
