The second month of the year is well underway, and you might be feeling really accomplished or disappointed with the strides you have been or haven’t been making towards achieving your goals.
So many of us make the mistake of setting high stakes at the beginning of January, eventually losing motivation and commitment as quickly as two weeks into the new year. There are a few questions you may want to ask yourself. Nyeesha D. Williams, Mental Health Advocate, Business Consultant, and Owner of Serenity and Oasis encourages you to get real with yourself. “Where does your passion reside? If we are insecure, living as martyrs, or even not understanding the power of our voice, it inhibits us to demand what you deserve.”
Are you being real with yourself? Seeking help when you need it? Giving yourself grace? All in all, digging deep and being vulnerable with yourself is going to be a huge game changer when approaching your goals.
Some of the top experts in the field share their tips on how you can change your outlook for good when it comes to goal setting.
When it comes to nutrition…
Wanting to revamp your lifestyle often contains the component of diet and exercise. The desire to be healthier is a great goal but not something that can be achieved overnight. Seeking quick results you may find you have fallen into the trend of a popular diet . “There is no perfect way to eat and this mindset applies to “diets” more than a lifestyle. A big factor as to why diets don’t work is because they are too rigid and we get bored or frustrated and quit.” explains Katie Fitzgerald, MS Clinical Nutrition, is the Co-Founder of HelloEden.
Laura Burak MS, RD, CDN founder of GetNaked Nutrition in Roslyn, NY highlights that restrictive diets add layers to the sometimes decades of a dieting mentality that can be hard to unlearn. “Like I tell my clients who are self-proclaimed serial dieters, your new healthy mind and body cannot be delivered to your porch tomorrow like an Amazon box. We must begin to think of creating healthier habits as a slow and steady process that takes patience, commitment and consistency,” explains Burak.
Change is hard. In the beginning of the year you may find you have all the willpower to purchase all the things you need to support a healthy lifestyle. “Our best laid plans fall short when life gets in the way, because we tried to change everything at once, instead of creating sustainable micro habits that allow us to be successful and make healthy choices more often than not,” shares Tori Jensen, Registered Nurse & Registered Dietitian (@ahmihealth). It can be very overwhelming to change so many things in your regular routine. Jensen explains without a strategy in place, eating healthier can lead to disappointment. Through supportive resources like Ahmi Health, they provide recipes, menus and a supportive community to help you feel less isolated and more empowered.
Remembering that you can’t flick a switch to eat an entirely new way will help you feel comfortable and confident in the process.
Involving the right mindset.
Past situations, circumstances, traumas and/or habits could be preventing you from channeling the right mindset for the desired results you are seeking. “In order to heal from your past, you have to be willing, to be honest with yourself about it. You need to feel it, in order to heal it, which would in turn release it,” explains Jasmine Montoya, Energy Healer & Spiritual Guide. You change when you are ready to; any day is a great day to shift out of unhealthy patterns. Montoya encourages clients to just pick a day and make a fresh start! These renewed ways of being don’t have to happen in January, changing this way of thinking will help you to approach your goals in your own way, not how society believes you should.
Once you have confronted what may have been holding you back all along (you don’t have to do this alone, there are so many supportive resources for this.) You will need to address some habits or ways of thinking you should consider tweaking. Not sure where to start? Jamie Blume, founder of Along Their Way suggests that “To turn a behavior into a habit requires understanding not only what to do but why we want to do it. In other words, for a habit to stick, we need to understand what is truly motivating us to put that habit into our life. By embracing that motivation, there is an increased likelihood that the behavior will become a habit.”
Setting goals and working towards achieving takes commitment and consistency. It may seem daunting at first but the reward ends up being a lot greater than the original goal you set out to achieve. You may find in the process that a lot of self discovery, healing and growth will occur.
Not giving up.
When we set our expectations super high, it’s easy to get let down when you notice that you aren’t achieving your goals in the time you hoped. One of the ways to not give up on your goals and yourself is to remember that change takes time. Kristen Glosserman, Coach and Author of If It’s Not Right, Go Left offers some advice to reset your mental focus. “Lesson #2 of my book: If It’s Not Right, Go Left Begin is starting each day with intention. Focus gives your day a theme, a brush stroke to give yourself direction on how to spend your time and where to place your energy. And Commit is getting into a habit of doing one thing each day that’s important to you, and will move you toward your goals.”
Harping on what you should have done in previous years, or even the day before, will only keep you stagnant and won’t help to propel you forward. “It’s important to practice leaving yesterday’s events in the past except for the lessons we learned,” shares Louise Heite, Coaching High-Performers. Heite suggests getting into the habit of asking yourself what went well each day, this will help you to find accomplishments you may have overlooked and at the same time help you handle situations better in the future when things don’t go according to planned.
She urges that taking the time to plan the night before will help you to rest easy and be prepared for what’s next.
Keep it simple for greater rewards! “Instead of making life-changing transformation it is important that we build small, sustainable habits. In other words dream big but start small,” says Heite.
