the time of resolutions and the sorrow of not continuing with those.
Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
After having a bang on the 31st of December, partying all night, we suddenly get a revelation of changing our life completely, starting with a tweet/insta-post with hashtag #NewYearNewMe.
But most people do not follow those resolutions and by the end of the first week of January, they are done with the resolutions with the added extra sorrow of paying for a humongous annual gym membership since annual membership is way cheaper than monthly or quarterly.
In this article I am going to help you fix this problem, so let’s get started.
1. Set Realistic Goals/Resolutions:
It’s been a couple of years since I am sticking to my new year's resolutions and completing those, every year. Don’t get me wrong, I am not perfect, there have been some years when even I missed my new year’s resolutions and after missing those for some time, I realized the mistake.
I was being too hard on myself, setting unrealistic mammoth of resolutions. Resolutions like say get six-pack abs by the end of the year, save x amount by the end of the year, or say read x books by the end of the year.
I am not saying these are completely unrealistic, but they were unrealistic for me.
Solutions: Set realistic goals, work out daily and focus on clean eating, read at least x pages a day, track your saving and get responsible for financial well-being.
With goals like these, you are not focusing on a single thing and growing as a person.
2. Don’t set fixed goals
Let’s take the example from the previous section, you set a goal that you want six-pack abs by the end of the year you put in all the effort, but by the end of the year, you might not have the six-pack abs, and even though you put a good amount of efforts with working out 5–6 times a week, clean eating and your health is much much better than before, you would lose interest and start neglecting the health thinking you will never get healthy just because you don’t have six-packs.
The resolutions are supposed to push you for improvement and not drag you down, hence instead of setting such fixed goals, you can set goals like, continuing/starting working out 5–6 times a week, continue/start clean eating. By this, you are focusing on the progress and not fixated on a less useful goal.
3. Spend time on Goal setting
Most of the time we simply add the goals by checking goals that are popular on social media, we don’t spend time analyzing our own life, things that are in our control, and things that we don’t control.
Social media might be able to give you some right suggestions or the right direction but based on those directions one should customize the goals based on their own ability.
Imagine a world-class body-builder posted saying, “I will bench press 500–600 Kgs” (I am not sure what’s the benchmark here), and you added the same goal, trying it on the first day of the year, who can not even bench press 100 Kgs, if you try this you would severely injure yourself.
The Goal-setting should be customized, based on your own ability and your needs. You need to spend time analyzing the things that you would want to achieve and set a roadmap for that.
4. Track the progress
Many people lose focus on their resolutions/goals since they do not track their progress and after some time they lose interest, and if you want to really achieve your resolutions, you must track the progress.
I usually review my resolutions at the end of every month. I check the list, and check the current progress, by this method, I know whether I am falling behind or which goals need more attention giving time to be better focused, and which goals are going well giving a sense of satisfaction.
When you review your goals and track your progress, there are high chances of achieving those goals.
TLDR:
- Set Realistic Goals/Resolutions: Goals that are realistic for you, customized based on your schedule.
- Don’t set fixed goals: Set goals in form of progress, not fixed Black/White goals, the purpose of resolutions is progress.
- Spend time on Goal setting: First, identify your ultimate life goals and then break down those into small achievements, and then you can add those to your annual goals. This is not a 5-minute task so spend enough amount of time on Goal Setting.
- Track the progress: Progress gives you satisfaction and motivation boost, and enough time to set a plan if you are falling behind, so you must track your progress on every goal on a regular basis.
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