New goals and desires are common in every new spin of our Earth. Mental pressure to change what we’ve not liked about ourselves and desires to be achieved before certain age milestones mean that we put ourselves up to fail. One to two thirds of people regain weight after their new diet in just a few months; 80% of people fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions. Too much disappointment rather than success.
Being kind to yourself and not giving yourself a hard time during your time of goal chasing is, of course, something to consider. There are days I don’t want to train, or study, or practice my instrument. Taking a day off workouts and having that piece of cake is good for moral. When it comes to being kind to yourself nothing is more kind than training, eating well and drinking plenty of water. Sometimes the difficult thing is the best thing for you and it’s just tough. The rewards are greater then.
“The work doesn’t start until you’re tired” – Shaun T (Insanity instructor).
Making time to be with family and friends and come back to your goal the next day is okay. Don’t let your goal make you anxious, but don’t use excuses easily. “I’m too busy, I’m too tired, I’ve had a tough day” are all cliches and all true too, so reward yourself with your goal in a smaller way, edge closer to your desire by just a small degree. You’ll always feel better afterwards, trust me. Sometimes I just want to sit on the sofa and watch a film, but I can’t do that to myself all day. To get better at my instrument sometimes I just look at YouTube for motivation.
Speaking of goals for the new year, is yours specific enough? Losing weight is one thing but do you truly know how to do it properly? If you don’t, find out. It’s not always about eating less, it’s about eating right. What if I told you that the best way to lose weight is good fibre, carbs, proteins, vitamins and minerals and above all micro-bacteria gut health. Other fad diets are mostly bogus and expensive. Stay away from juice diets, eating only green things, etc, or anything else where people are just trying to make money from you. It’s all B.S.
The part of any goal or desire is to be truly specific. Just saying, “I need to eat better”, or “I need to lose weight”, “I need to get fit”, is one thing, but what does that actually mean? The nuts and bolts of it. “I want to lose 2lb, in two weeks. I’ll start by making a food diary, reducing the amount of biscuits I eat and replacing them with an apple. I will write a journal about how I feel about reducing my biscuits and eating granny smiths. I will put a picture up of myself and have a wall calendar marking off my days to success in big red pen. I will aim to drink one glass of water more than usual to help with my weight loss” is a much better way of approaching your goal. Having an everyday look at your goal with family and friends asking about how you’re doing is going to keep you inspired and motivated.
During the lockdowns and trials we are facing now it would be easy to curl up and not bother. Anxiety creeps in very easily. It’s the perfect time to try something easy, gain experience of trying something new or change a habit; achieve that goal and set another easy one. You’ll then learn to achieve goals, which is a goal in itself. This becomes a habit and under practice your goals can become bigger. Practice it. Take your time, tell the world what you want and go and get it. Visualise the end goal. Why do you want it? How will you feel? What will be the rewards? Make the process of doing it exciting.
“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” —Andrew Carnegie
Matt Hobson
MHMT FITNESS COACH