It’s a new year, yahoo! Most of our population had made some kind of new year resolution, yet there is a smaller percentage of the population that is currently still working on it. Why is this the case? Why is it so hard to work towards achieving our goals?
First of all, there is no cookie cutter answer. Each individual has their own pieces to their puzzle and all of those pieces fit together differently from one stage of life to the next. There is however, a very common mindset that I see people get into when I sit down to discuss goals with them, especially during this time of year. It’s the mindset of, “I have a goal in mind, and in order to achieve it, I have to do this, this, this, this, oh and this!” “I also need to stick to this plan and not deviate from it, ever.” Okay, stop that freight train right there. Just take a look at what could be coming ahead, that looks like a pretty intense journey and there is a high possibility of getting derailed. As it turns out, the human mind can only achieve changing one or two behaviors at a time. If you truly want your goal and can commit to making small steady changes to achieve it, you are more likely to be successful. You could call it the Little Engine that Could mentality. Changing the behaviors that are hardwired in our brains will lead to us successfully sustaining the lifestyle we are trying to achieve, instead of reverting back to our old behaviors if something comes along to trigger us. It just takes a lot of effort, persistence, and believing in yourself.
Let’s break this down. You have a goal in mind, let’s pretend that you want to lose weight. Okay, now let’s make it specific; again, pretending; you tell me you would like to lose 30 pounds. Alright, now you might already have in your mind all of the things that you need to do in order to achieve this goal. Great, write them down so you can keep track of them. Maybe one of these things that you feel you need to do is eat more vegetables, but you hate them! Sweet, let’s focus on mastering just this topic. Now, think about the smallest and easiest thing you could commit to doing every single day for two to three weeks that will lead to the achievement of that topic. In this instance, an example could be as small as just consciously making an effort to look at a vegetable once per day. Once you feel like you have that down consistently, you could progress to taking one bite of a vegetable every day for a few weeks. Then you can progress to eating a full serving, and just keep building off that. Now this might be an exaggeration for you, or maybe not, you may love vegetables but hate doing physical activity. The point is, be sure to cater the practice to you and pick a behavior that you don’t normally do that will be easy for you to adopt into your already chaotic lifestyle. Eventually, with building on your practices you will get to your goal.
The overall goal is to change your current behaviors to align them with your goals for a healthy life. I’m sure you know by now, the human mind is a tricky thing, we just need to learn how to outsmart our own brains, and that my friends, takes time. I think you can, I think you can.