2021 New Year’s Resolution Falling Apart? The “Solution” is Right in Front of You! (updated)
Though I’m not the biggest fan of resolutions, I get January is a convenient time to make positive changes. This year creating strategies for self care, healing and fun are more important than ever.
But did you know there is a national date when most resolutions become memories instead of habits? January 28!
As a self-improvement junkie, I think a lot about why most of us can’t make resolutions work. The beginning of the year is a clean slate right? Not a lot going on there, eh? Ha! The devil you say! Actually, the first of the year brings tons, if not more issues and changes than the holidays.
There are bills to pay, things to return, houses to put back to pre festivity status, jobs pick up full steam, as we try and catch up from all the slackery of December. We’re emotionally drained and, physically, we’re pretty spent too.
OK, but wait! Now why not, try and learn something entirely new too? Hey, I never said the truth would be pretty. Here’s where it gets better.
So as I’m thinking that it’s the timing, it occurs to me that whatever your resolution, achieving it usually entails adapting and creating a foreign mindset or action. But look at that word R-E-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N! Break it apart what do you get? The answer was right in front of us all the time!
RE-SOLUTION
Re Solution your resolution to achieve it! Here’s how it works. Your New Year’s resolution is to lose 20 pounds. Did you ever lose weight successfully? What did you do? What worked? Then do those things now first before you add more habits to learn from scratch!
For instance, let’s say you were once a killer tennis player, but quit tennis for 20 years. One day, you decide, “Dang, I really miss tennis”. When you pick up that racquet, your muscles and brain will remember how to swing, etc. and you will quickly ascend to your old level.
Isn’t that cool? Just to be sure my theory worked, I Re Solutioned my New Years Resolutions to get up at 6 AM daily. Now, I’m a bonafide night owl and I’ve never been able to make this stick, except when I was in college. I woke up at 5 AM, went to the gym by 6 AM then off to library by 7:30 AM and class by 9 AM!
That Candy is a far cry from me now, who often wakes at 9 AM, ok sometimes 11. So how did I do it back then?:
- I was motivated by the negative consequence that if I didn’t wake early enough to take my mom to work, I wouldn’t have a car and be stranded.
- The night before I had all my clothes laid out and gym bag packed ready to grab and go. That meant when I woke up all I had to do was throw gym clothes on, brush my teeth and leave.
- I had a goal that excited me about getting up: being a high powered attorney. Ok, that goal fell to the wayside eventually . . . but guess what? That doesn’t even matter now, that motivation fueled me to being successful at that moment.
Applying these factors to my situation now, I wrote down how they can help me wake earlier and keep them by my bed:
- Negative Consequence: If I don’t get up, I will be in a bad mood and hate the rushed one step behind feeling that it creates in my day. I wrote on my bedside crib sheet: “Do you really want to feel crabby the rest of the day ?”
- Preparing the Night Before: I lay out my exercise clothes, my skin care and write down the first work task I will do that day and put what I need out for that on my desk.
- Goal Visualization: This one was a bit trickier because when I was in college I had a goal fed to me — that was already in existence. But having your own business is different, so I wrote my mission tagline “entertaining the world with spa to bring the benefits of spa travel and living to the mainstream”, with a photo of me reporting from the International Spa Association Conference where we had so much fun!
Thus far, I’m on track and waking up at 6 AM nearly every day! What New Year’s Resolution can you RE Solution? Try it and let me know how you’re doing.
