So you made it another year and you set yourself some goals for the new year, right? Congrats, good for you!
That’s at least better than a lot of people who aimlessly drift through life without having any real idea what goals they want to accomplish. So you should be proud of yourself for that.
But you probably already failed. And failed a while ago too.
So you feel bad and you need to remotivate yourself. You need to get back in it!
But you should probably screw the damn New Year's Resolutions.
It’s a proven fact that less than 10% of people feel like they successfully achieve their resolutions, so chances are you’ll fail too.
Not trying to be negative, just using statistics. You may be more likely to be successful than most, but clearly there is an issue here.
Take the Pressure Off
So often resolutions are sweeping changes. People often resolve to make huge changes in their life and lifestyle to achieve certain goals. In your head it sounds lovely and practical, but in reality we drastically underestimate the sacrifices in other activities we’ll have to give to change our behaviors, and the emotional strength it may require to begin down the path to achieving these resolutions, let alone actually completely achieving them.
Whether it’s losing weight, starting to run, ridding ourselves of an addiction, meditating, resolving to get out more, become more social, or whatever yours may be, most of these goals aren’t something you’ll achieve in a few weeks or even a few months.
Quitting cold turkey for addictions almost never works too. Resolving to quit and then beating yourself up after failing because you didn’t make it the first time is not the road to success. In fact, you should view a failure like that as a step on the road to success.
In much the same way, not sticking to your plan, or being hung up on unexpected difficulties is a part of the path to success in your goal.
We tend to believe that we have to do it all at once, but the road to success has never been through suddenly one day deciding to change your life overnight and successfully changing it the next morning.
You don’t go from playing t-ball to hitting in the Majors in a couple of weeks.
I’ve always found that when I decide to change something about my life it’s never going to be something that happens extremely quickly. So take the pressure off yourself. You don’t need to suddenly stick to an extreme workout regiment.
You don’t have to go from eating a bunch of junk food to going vegan and super healthy all the time.
We’re all resistant to change.
Gradual Pushing
It’s been known for a while now that the human mind is resistant to change. The job of the brain is to maintain the status quo, so it will fight to keep its sources of addictions, mediocre behaviors, and laziness. Eventually it will give though, and it will adapt to a new status quo.
Your job is to push yourself to create the habits so it doesn’t take effort to consistently maintain them.
The best way is gradual pushing.
Meaning you have to push yourself enough so you’re overcoming something and growing, but it can’t be so difficult that it takes so much willpower where you’ll give up because it’s too difficult.
You’re not going to suddenly start running for 5 miles five days a week if you barely run twice a year right now. For the vast majority of people this is simply too much of a divergence from their current behavior and it’ll take to much willpower to go through the motions of setting aside all that time and pushing through the pain.
Something more simple will be even better to establish the habit first off. Try walking a few times a week and you’re already setting aside some time every week to exercise without all of the physical strain that comes with running. Then when you’re ready to start running you’ll already be used to setting aside some time a few days a week for exercise.
It’s these small steps that will lead you to actual success. It’s so much easier to jump into the pool when and get used to the water when it’s 65 degrees than when it’s 50 degrees.
Screw the January 1st thing
Besides the failures people make by trying to get too far ahead too quickly, this attachment to having to start something new on a specific date is ridiculous.
There’s a reason for the stereotype of the jam packed gym the first few weeks of every new year. Everyone wants to make good on their resolutions of working out, but most will never make it past those first few weeks.
It doesn’t matter if it’s January 1st or not. The start date of your goal shouldn’t have to start on some arbitrary date. If you were ready back in November, you should have started then. If you feel you need to wait or want to dedicate some effort and time to something else first, then maybe you should start in April.
Waiting until January 1st is too easily an excuse to put off starting, or too easily an artificial push to have to start your goal before it’s applicable, you’re capable of it, or you are ready to.
January 1 doesn’t matter. Just start.
In reality there’s nothing different from December 31 to January 1, other than it being the day we decided artificially that it is when the new year begins. It’s not like it’s suddenly a completely different experience.
Perhaps if we all got together went through all these rituals, and the new year was really impactful it would truly feel different, but for most of us it’s just a longer weekend than usual and a great excuse to travel somewhere or party. There’s not much of a significant ritual about that.
So if you haven’t started your resolution yet, who cares? If you started halfway through January, no big deal. If you started this week, that’s great too. Start next week, aim for March 11, or maybe April 23, or maybe one month from now. Or better yet, start and forget the date that you actually started because it doesn’t matter.
This is about changing a big aspect of your life and if your life was different right now would you really be paying attention to the day that you started? No because it wouldn’t matter and your life would already be better.
Fail
And remember too, you’re going to fail. You’re not always going to easily get through it. You’re going to struggle. You’re going to slip up, slack off, forget, and mess up.
Take the pressure off of yourself and already have an inner knowing that this will happen to you. Changing your patterns of behavior is never easy, especially when your environment may be against it, and there’s no big external force making it so you had to.
If you suddenly surrounded by only people who motivated you to get out and run all the time, then you surely would much more easily be running, but that is very rarely the case for anyone when it comes to changing our lives. The help is out there from other people, and a better environment is out there as well, but it’s not suddenly going to be a perfect environment for your growth and success.
It’s your job to figure out how to do that, and as ironic as it may be, the environment will start chasing after you once you start.
So get out there and start changing your life! But relax would you?
We’re already halfway through February, but you’re not too late if you haven’t started. You’re not too late if you haven’t even set a goal yet. And relax about trying to change your life overnight. It ain’t ever gonna happen. Anything really valuable will always take work, and that’s what makes the reward worth it. So get it out there and start!
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If you made it this far, awesome, thanks for reading! Don't forget to upvote, resteem, and comment, and follow me for more quality reads. I'm aiming to post mostly about personal development and cryptocurrency. I guess you could say it's my own little "new year's resolution," and I would love to hear your thoughts down in the comment section ↓