I’m so excited to start my health and fitness journey for the new years that I’ve already started! It’s super important to set goals and figure out where you want to see yourself over the next year. While time is just a human construction it helps us realize how far we have come.
Let’s talk about how we are going to set our goals together and continue to work on them throughout this next year. We’ll be each other accountability partners! Which by the way is so incredibly important… “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” So surround yourself with people who are also working on their own goals!
“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different.”
— C.s. lewis
1.
Set Your Goal.
I think when it comes to New Years Resolution we have all these things we want to change in our lives that we add too many “resolutions” and end up doing none.
It’s great to want to change the bad habits in our lives, but let’s focus on one specific thing we want to actually accomplish the most. Personally, my New Years Resolution is to improve my flexibility and balance. In specific, I want to improve my handstands.
So figure out what you want yours to be and write it down. For the sake of this community I want us to build, the theme of this years goal should be health and fitness related!
2.
What Do You Want The Result To Look Like?
I’m very big on “the journey > the results” however, it is very important to know exactly what you are aiming to achieve. Understand what you want your end results to look like.
Print a picture of it. Visualize what your goal should look like. Make a vision board.
3.
Plan Out What Works For You.
Setting an unrealistic plan on how you aim to achieve your goal will seriously burn you out before you will ever even see results. And when you don’t see immediate results after drastically changing your lifestyle, inevitably you will quit. That is what we want to avoid.
So let’s figure out how we are going to make a realistic plan to achieve our resolutions. Obviously this is dependent on your goal, but here is my plan that has been working great for the past couple weeks!
Monday-Friday I love having a common morning and night time routine. This is something that is important to me. Because my morning and night time routine are already consistent in my life, I will be including my plan in my already consistent routine. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I aim to practice yoga after breakfast getting in a great stretch, and then working on balancing my handstands. At night I added in a 5 minute stretch before I go to sleep.
These small adjustments in my day, over time, will (hopefully) end in results, but also have been an incredible part of the journey. Which is more important than the results anyways.
Find something small, that you can include in an already consistent routine that will make a difference overtime. Maybe it’s eating breakfast in the morning, maybe it’s actually using the weights when you go to the gym, maybe it’s only drinking one coke a day instead of 3.
4.
Learn To Enjoy The Journey.
Like I mentioned already “the journey > the results.” And I can’t stress this enough. While it’s great when we start to see improvement, or lost weight, or bigger muscles, or whatever it is you are trying to achieve, when you put your focus on the results and you start to become stagnant (as you eventually will) you will eventually start feeling hopeless. Something we want to avoid.
Here’s a secret I tell myself when I start a new goal and need to learn to love the journey. I think about my favorite show (specifically Gossip Girl) and think back to Chuck and Blaire’s love story. Yes the last episode of them getting married and having a son was great, the ending we deserved. However, we would not feel so strongly about them is it was for the long, and I mean LONG, journey of their love story. The constant sexual tension between them, the break ups and untold yearning of their love. It was the journey that made us want them to be together.
So yes, while I just used two fictional characters to compare a fitness journey, just know enjoying the process is what you will look back to in the end, rather than the final results.
5.
Accountability.
And lastly, and very importantly, accountability. While I want this to be a place that we can lift each other up and motivate each other to accomplish our goals for the year, I think it is also important to find people we come in contact with everyday to a. either have a similar goal or b. encourage you to constantly keep up with your own.
Maybe this is the year you decide to make the money for a personal trainer. Which I will come out and say is incredibly worth it and should not be thought out to be as some huge luxury. If we can pay money for coffee every morning, or subscriptions every month, our dinners and drinks each week, you should invest in your body that will be with you for the rest of your life.
Iron sharpens iron. A whole blog post I made on the importance of who you surround yourself with. Find people with a similar mindset as yourself. Find people with similar goals as yourself. Find people who are continually working on themselves. It’s incredible to see how much your “clan” or group of friends influence your decisions and life.
Find like minded people.