New Year’s Resolutions
New year’s resolutions are often big ticket items.
It’s the beginning of a new year and people are filled with hope, especially since 2020 seemed to take us all by surprise… I wrote a piece about this in my latest newsletter (you can sign up for future editions here) but thought I would share a bit more for everyone to see! What new year’s resolutions have you set for yourself in 2021? Whatever your resolutions or goals, the key to achieving them lies in your plan and creating habits. Without these, your new year’s resolutions and goals are just wishes. We know some of the most common ones are;
Exercise more
Eat better
Lose weight
Be more organised
Get a new skill
Save more money &/or spend less money
Have any of these been a previous resolution for you? Were you successful in your endeavours? Unfortunately many people won’t achieve their new year’s resolutions… Why? I believe it is mostly due to a lack of planning, specificity and habit formation. Let’s take the example above of wanting to exercise more. First of all, exercise more is a pretty ambiguous goal. If you currently didn’t exercise at all but started one 3km walk a week - would this be enough for you to be satisfied you have achieved your goal or resolution? This is where specificity comes in. You’ve probably heard about SMART goals before, if not, this is what SMART stands for.
S - specific
M - measurable
A - attainable
R - relevant
T - time-based
It makes your goal specific right? So exercise more just doesn’t cut the mustard if we consider it in terms of a SMART goal. We need to ensure it is specific, so what kind of exercise are we talking about - cardio, resistance, yoga, a sport? Measurable means we can measure progress so that you can accurately judge when the goal has been met. Attainable refers to your ability to actually reach your goal. For example, if you’ve never stepped foot in a pool before and your goal is to qualify for the 200m butterfly at the world titles, I'd say it isn’t terribly attainable. Relevant simply means that the goal is relevant to you and should benefit you directly. Time-based is and important but often overlooked part of goal setting. Ensuring you have timeframe to meet keeps you accountable and focused. With all this in mind a better resolution or goal pertaining to exercise might be something like… I will do 3 x 50 minute weight workouts and 2 x 45 min cardio sessions every week for 2 months. We’ve been specific with the types of exercise, we can measure progress by scheduling it in our calendar or using a habit tracking app, it’s attainable (this is a personal judgement call), relevant to you… yep. And time-based - we’ve set out time per sessions, number of sessions and an overall time-frame of 2 months. After this 2 months I’d bet that you’ve cemented some pretty good long-term habits and will keep it up.
Lets now shift our focus and talk about habits. I believe that habit formation is the absolute key to longterm healthy lifestyle success on many fronts; eating well, sleeping well and exercising. For a full discussion on habits I can’t recommend the book Atomic Habits by James Clear enough. I am going to give you a quick primer on my take on habits here though to get you thinking!
Habits are the little things we do each day - often the small things. Many of them without conscious thought. What you do repeatedly ultimately results in the person you are today. Don’t believe me? Think about this (highly simplistic example). If you’re overweight, this is possibly because day-in day-out you have likely eaten too much (calorie surplus) and moved too little (not much physical activity), which has resulted in an excess of energy over time and mostly occurred due to unconscious habits. Watching too much Netflix, not going for a daily walk or gym session, using the same ingredients you’ve always used instead of looking for healthier options, having a couple of wines or beers everyday to wind down, eating at the same time each day without any thought to your actual appetite. This is being very simplistic, but to be honest in Australia’s current obesity crisis, many of us are doing just these types of things and wonder why we are in such a physical state.
So how do we create good habits? James Clear suggests we do the following;
Start with an incredibly small habit. In fact, make it so easy that you just can’t say no. For example, instead of trying to do a 10km jog each day, start with something more achievable like a 30 min walk. Don’t rely on your motivation to achieve your habit. Motivation comes and goes. You need to practice self discipline and by using small habits, you give yourself confidence to improve.
Increase your habit in small ways. Think about this. If you improved your squat weight by just 1% each day in 100 days you’d have increased that by 100%! Always strive to improve, even just slightly everyday. 1% isn’t a lot but it is still an improvement and for pretty attainable, don’t you think?
As your habit builds up, break them down into chunks. Let’s use an example of a goal to meditate 10 mins per day. If you slowly increase this up to 30 mins, you might find this to be too long in one session cutting into other parts of your day, so you could then break that down to 2 x 15 min sessions.
If you fall off the wagon, get back on again bloody quickly. One day isn’t going to make a huge difference, but if you do stay off track for a second day you’re starting to form a bad habit making it harder to get back up again. Real life experience tells us all at some stage we may get off track, but it is important to (quickly) identify why it occurred, employ strategies to stop it occurring again and to have a backup or ‘what if’ plan. Example - if your habit is walking each day and then you have a week of rain what are you going to do? It will be pretty difficult to get back to walking after a week off. Which is why an ‘if then’ plan is so important. If it rains when I want to go for a walk, then I will go to the gym on the treadmill.
Be patient with yourself and stick to a sustainable pace. Patience is a skill that many of us have trouble with, especially in today’s fast-paced world and everyone wanting instant gratification. Being consistent and patient is where most people will fail. Take weight loss for example. Many clients I see want to lose weight very quickly and they don’t want to be consistent to reach their goal. They’re happy to put the grog down Monday to Friday but when the weekend rolls round, it’s a different story. Being consistent Monday to Friday and feasting on alcohol and fast food on the weekend is NOT consistent. Patience also is a difficult concept for many to grasp. Many people have gained weight quite slowly over months and years but expect to see dramatic results on the scales within a week! Sounds ridiculous, but most of us are guilty of it.
Habits matter but because they’re small ticket items, they’re often overlooked. They have tremendous power when utilised correctly. I’ll finish off this post with one of James’ quotes. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
