As good as New Year’s resolutions seem on paper, they have one fundamental flaw; they put you in a mindset that certain conditions need to be met before you can begin achieving your objective. This condition is waiting for the new year to begin. I once read that the hardest part of completing a task is starting it. If I put my goals off until the new year, what’s stopping me from pushing it to February, April, August and finally I’m back waiting for the next new year? I have to end this cycle of continuously putting my goals off and start them now. If you want to be better within the next year, start now. Go and learn that new language in your off time, go to the gym and become the healthy person you know you could be and start appreciating where you are now and how far you’ve come.
If you’ve made it this far in life, there’s still so much more to achieve. Time does not stand still, so why should we? Take a good long look at your goals and plan to achieve them. Once you have your plan, get out there and make things happen. Don’t wait; life is happening now.
Once you overcome the hurdle of starting your goal, the next obstacle is sticking to it. In your plan to achieve your goal you should include something that will help keep you focused and encouraged to reach it. This is why New Year’s resolutions are not so effective. We get all excited to do them but when the time comes, we give up.
It’s difficult not to give up when tackling something hard. Instead of giving up, maybe you could take some time and try to figure out why the task is hard to achieve. If you can understand your goal a bit more, it could help you in the process of achieving it. If you are trying to lose weight and are finding it difficult, maybe visiting a dietitian or nutritionist may help you and give insight into your body type. Once you understand yourself more, you’re able to do more targeted workouts and achieve your goal more easily.
There are many conditions that affect our ability to achieve our goal. In order to overcome these obstacles, we need to be flexible and understanding. The key is to never give up. I suggest rewriting your goals on paper and write down the reasons why you can’t achieve them. Then, go over each reason and come up with solutions.
New Year’s resolutions tend to be spur of the moment decisions and have no substance to them. It’s better to have goals in mind and carefully plan a way to achieve them. Remember, your goal can only be achieved by you. The idea behind New Year’s resolutions should be forgotten and we should just continuously encourage each other to achieve our goals. Forget waiting and forget all the lies businesses try to sell you. Start your goal on your terms with a plan.
Photo: D. Cerullo
