By Betsy Mendel
How many times have you made well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions on Jan 1 only to break them weeks later. Statistically 92 percent of people break their resolutions. Only 1 out of 12 people are successful. Not very good odds.
Get off the resolution roller coaster. Instead of resolutions let’s talk about commitments. Frankly, resolutions are simply intentions you make on Jan. 1 whereas a commitment involves an actual action plan to obtain your goal. Really making a commitment and holding yourself accountable is critical.
Personally I don’t make resolutions. I am committed to being my best, feeling and looking my best all year round, not just on Jan 1st.
Here are some simple steps you can take to accomplish this:
- Don’t try to change everything at once. Pick one thing and stick to it.
- Seek a habit, not a result. Focus on the behavior not the outcome.
- Change your environment. If you want to lose weight and get healthier stock your pantry with healthy wholesome foods.
- Small changes add up. Create achievable goals.
- When you slip, get back on track quickly. Avoid black and white thinking.
- Schedule your new habits into your life. Write it down and stick to it.
Step by step ways to keep your commitments to yourself.
Don’t try to change everything at once. Pick one thing and stick to it.
It seems like we try to change everything at once rather than prioritize and work through our list one thing at a time. We try to take on everything at once, our weight, our relationship, our career, our family and our finances. But it is completely unrealistic to think we have the bandwidth and capacity to actually live our lives and be true to our day to day responsibilities and have time to fix all the things we just mentioned. In fact, sometimes the more we try to do, the less able we are to do any of these tasks and everything suffers. Oftentimes we actually go backwards rather than forward.
First step in this process is to prioritize. How do we do this? Start by making a list of everything you have on your mind you want to change. Now really look at your list. Take a moment don’t rush through this critical first step. Think about how each thing affects the other and which of these steps makes the most sense to start with. Take your list and write it out. Next take your list and cut it apart with each thing on a separate piece of paper. Arrange them in order of importance. Take a minute, look at it again. Rearrange the list if you need to. Keep doing this until you feel you have the list in order from most important to least important, now number them with “1” being the most important on down to the last number.
Now look at your first thing you what to change, the next step is to set a tangible and achievable goal you know you can attain. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy but something you know you can do with work and commitment. For instance, you say “I want to lose 10 pounds by Valentine’s Day this year.” That is a realistic and obtainable goal. Now it’s time to make the commitment. Take a new sheet of paper and write down your commitment and put it in a place you see every day. Now we have prioritized and are starting with our first goal. We are on the pathway to success one step at a time.
Seek a habit, not a result. Focus on the behavior not the outcome.
Let’s continue with our goal of losing 10 pounds by Valentine’s Day. There are two ways to obtain this goal. Through a change in our what and when we eat and the other is through exercise, just getting up and moving. It is important to not be so locked into the result of losing those 10 pounds and addicted to the scale. What we need to do is look at what behaviors we are going to change and what positive behaviors are we going to reward. Again we want to look at things in a way we know we will succeed and with that the outcome follows. Let’s start in the kitchen.
Betsy Mendel has been a certified personal who has been helping her clients look and feel their best for over two decades. She is based on the Westside of Los Angeles and offers one-on-one and small group training. For more information head to betsysbasictraing.com or email betsm1@yahoo.com.
