You had this entire thing planned out. This was the time you were going to be disciplined and motivated to stick with whatever new goal you had identified.
You were armed with tips and strategies.
You had a game plan. A list of actions that would take you to the fruitful land of success.
You were not going to fail this time.
Then life happened.
You found out that there is a reason only something like 8% of people stick to their New Year’s resolutions.
Any kind of difficult change is hard.
People are like rivers. We like to take the easiest, most comfortable path of least resistance. We want to be comfortable. We want to be fat and happy and content.
But the most successful people rise against those tides. They act in ways that go against their base emotions and desires for comfort. We all know that.
Knowing that does not make it any easier for the rest of us. The place where intention and desire meet reality and indiscipline is fraught with frustration and disappointment.
When we set goals, most of us want to achieve them from the bottom of our hearts.
When we fall off the wagon, when we don’t stick to our word, we tend to beat ourselves up more than we even deserve.
It then leads to a cycle of self- recrimination which leads to more inaction and even regression from our goals.
This is a brutal and unproductive space in which to live.
The fact is that each day you wake up alive and healthy, is a new day to make positive choices.
I am coming off of one of these periods in my life that I desperately need to shake.
I am quite happy with life and have been coasting along since I returned from my awesome reggae cruise to Jamaica.
But since then, I have not made any progress on my discipline and commitment goals.
I went on the cruise and had what may have just been the best time of my life. I came back and have spent the last few weeks enjoying the holidays, my family and friends . I ate, drank, partied and had a great time.
I am currently on my staycation and in that pensive mood that accompanies periods of solitude.
I realized that I had set certain goals for behaviors that I want to adopt, behaviors that I desperately want to incorporate, since my 2016 depends on my successful adoption of these behaviors.
I will expound more on my goals in other posts- they revolve around waking early, eating well, exercising, reading and other activities that will support my parenting, physical well being, my blogging pursuits and my increased responsibilities at my day job.
But I want to dedicate this post to some simple tips to reset and recharge when you have wandered away from your goals or have fallen off the wagon.
Tip 1: Shake off the Negative Emotions
You will not make any progress when you remain in a stew of negativity about not having achieved your goals.
Remember you are human and prone to mistakes. Be kind to yourself.
Tip 2: Narrow your List
I rattled off a bunch of goals that I have above. When you have fallen off, the last thing you need is a list of five hundred things you need to do.
Focus on no more than 2 or 3 goals.
Once you start making progress on those, your winning momentum will give you the mojo you need to achieve more.
For me, this means- waking early, eating healthfully and exercising consistently. Trust me when I say everything else will follow.
Tip 3: Get Started Tomorrow (or Today depending on what time you read this)
Start making those small choices that will support your goals now.
Don’t think of the big overwhelming goals, think of what you need to do, in this moment to move you closer to your desires.
For example, I am sipping on water and eating pineapple slices as I type this. Last week I would have been chowing down on my Jamaican black Christmas cake. Thank goodness it’s done. I ate it all :-).
Tomorrow morning I will wake early and work out to a Youtube video. Declutter a bit. Clean and organize my home. Read.
All small attainable goals that will boost my spirits and make me want to continue on this path.
Try some variation of this as it relates to your goals. You may be pleasantly surprised at the cumulative effects of small wins.
Remind yourself that even in failure you are not defective, you are just a human being trying to be a better version of yourself, and in doing that, you have already won.
Don’t make your standards for your behavior so high, you end up in miserable self sabotage.
This is not the military, this is life. You only live once and while you want to be disciplined, committed and successful, you also want to have fun along the way!
You want to find some way to enjoy achieving your goals, otherwise sticking to them will be very difficult.
Here’s to getting back on the wagon and enjoying the path to our goals in 2016!