Why Your 2020 Resolutions are Already in the Trash
Author: Ben Greene, CSCS, CPT, YMCA of Parkersburg
You’re three weeks into 2020 and your New Year’s Resolutions are already in the trash! What happened? And more importantly, how do I move forward from here?
5 reasons why your resolutions might have already failed:
Your resolution was too vague. If your goal was as ambiguous as “to be in better shape,” you may have set yourself up for failure! Without some sort of metrics to measure and track your progress, this isn’t an achievable goal, it’s simply an aspiration.
You chose too many resolutions. You are ambitious, great! While wanting to accomplish a lot of goals is good in theory, not having an in-depth and precise plan to accomplish them all is not. You may have quickly realized that your determined energy was spread too thin and no real progress was being made on any of them.
You aimed for the moon but didn’t have the means to take off. Good for you for setting large goals! However, if you don’t have a solid foundation or experience setting and accomplishing small goals diligently, paralysis by analysis can easily take over from not knowing where and how to start.
You gave yourself too long of a time period to start showing results. This one is pretty self-explanatory and goes hand in hand with number 3. If you don’t have a foreseeable deadline that motivates you to focus on your goals, it can become too easy to procrastinate, leaving you spinning your wheels.
Your resolutions were contradictory to your current lifestyle or other resolutions. Don’t join the 5:00am wake-up club if you don’t get off from work until midnight. Setting goals comes with lifestyle changes, so before you can put your goal into action, you need to evaluate whether your lifestyle is currently conducive to that goal. If not, you may need to adjust your lifestyle first, or at least be realistic with what you can currently commit to.
5 ways to reset those resolutions:
Write it down! When I mentioned your resolutions being in the trash, I wasn’t being figurative or referring to the trash folder on your computer. I want you to literally grab a pen and paper and write down your goal to bring it into the physical world. It doesn’t matter if you hang it where you can see it every day or if you hide it in a drawer, as long as you write it down! Identifying what you want with something tangible and measurable is the first step to actually accomplishing it.
Cut down your list or combine resolutions. If you have never had success with setting New Year’s Resolutions or a similar personal goal, I recommend narrowing down your list to start with just one! If you are more experienced but this year hasn’t gone well so far, try to cut it down to 2-3 goals at the maximum. Some can be combined, for example, “eat healthier” and “exercise more” can be changed to “lose x amount of weight” if that’s the reason behind the first two. Then eating healthier and exercising more would be the steps within the goal to help you lose the weight.
Break down that resolution, big or small into multiple easier sub-goals. Every goal has certain steps that need to be completed in order to accomplish that goal. The bigger the goal, the more steps, and the more unachievable it may seem. But by breaking that goal down into as many steps or sub-goals as possible, it can turn the primary goal into a more streamlined day-to-day process. This also gives you continual positive reinforcements by completing several small sub-goals every day, getting you closer and closer to your target objective.
Set a time frame to reassess your resolutions. This can be done weekly, monthly, or quarterly, whatever works for you. This keeps you honest to yourself, helps you figure out what has been working, and more importantly what hasn’t. The key here is to start small with something you know for a fact that can be accomplished, even if all goes wrong by the time of your reassessment. It’s much better to overachieve, reassess, and crank up the intensity then have to backtrack with your head hung low.
Account for lifestyle changes before planning out your resolutions. To have success with any major goal you must be prepared for the lifestyle change that is paired with it. Let’s say your resolution is to “go to the gym, x times per week.” If the only time you know you can get there without other engagements interrupting is early in the morning before work, your main goal has just changed to getting up early enough to make it to the gym before work. That way if you can manage to make it out of bed, you might as well go to the gym while you are up! This may also require you to go to bed earlier to get the necessary 7-9 hours of sleep. You might need to say no to drinks after work or your Netflix binge before bed to achieve that. (Did I mention that goal building may help encourage other healthy habits by default?)
Having a way to effectively reset after we fall off track is just as important as the goal itself. Take the time to adjust your footing now so the rest of your year can be a testimony to all the things you’ll overcome!