Making New Year’s Resolutions? Read THIS!

How Motivation, Willpower, and Communities Fuel Our Goals

The Key to Goals: Consistency vs. Intensity

Welcome to January of 2023; the New Year is here! During this time, we are inundated with commercials and social media posts (plus ads) for wellness products and gym memberships, and the overall vibe that we?need?to make something of this new timeline. “New Year, new me!” Sure, but is it really? It’s so easy to fall into this trap of feeling like January 1st is the day you finally “figure it all out” and become the person you’ve pictured in your mind’s eye for so long! The gym membership won’t go to waste this year! That new diet starts as soon as the new year hits! You’ll feel happy, healthy, and achieve all your goals.

But how much of this is truly sustainable? Going from 0 to 100, from holiday mode to health and wellness guru overnight, isn’t realistic for anyone…even me and I’m a health coach! What is sustainable though, is making smaller, incremental goals…not only for the new year, but for a lifetime of progress. And how do we make this work? We start with something I like to call consistency vs. intensity (or C vs. I for short).

Consistency implies doing something repeatedly, to make it a habit. Intensity is when we “go hard;” we go all-in to make something happen. Usually, these two approaches are difficult to undertake simultaneously. The more intense something is, the more challenging to maintain. When you want to maintain something for the long-run, intensity can, paradoxically, slow you down. An intense approach often comes with a shorter timeline. If you’re going for a super intense workout for your 2023 resolution, it will become increasingly difficult to keep up with it. It’s more energy to muster?every?day and more times you’re likely to say to yourself “that wasn’t enough to ‘count.’” Consistency vs. intensity can come into play with any area of life you’re looking to improve, like exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress, you name it! All of this requires that you look at the goal, consider your personal commitment, and choose for yourself which approach is the best fit.

Other factors when trying to achieve our goals with C vs. I, come from our motivation for change, the willpower we harness (don’t worry, it’s more than just white knuckling through the struggle), and the communities we build around us for support. Keep reading, I’ll break it all down for you. Here’s to your New Year’s resolutions lasting longer than 2 weeks!

Motivation Do’s and Don’ts

Maybe the month of December didn’t quite go your way? Your nutrition choices weren’t the best or maybe the consistency with your regular workout routine fell to the wayside? Either way, you want January to be your fresh start, not only to get back on track with your normal habits and routine, but with the fresh, new goals for this new year, too!

But…the holidays felt like a rut. You dug yourself a trench, and now it’s time to climb out. Sure, the changing of the clock to a new month and a new year can offer a line-in-the-sand. But if our objective is to keep going, how does anyone find the motivation to do it?!

Some people like to guilt themselves into not eating?this or that. Others might think that the “no pain, no gain” self-talk helps in finishing a workout. We can try as hard as we can with these ways of thinking, but in the end, it’s likely to be short-lived. What we “can’t” eat is suddenly going to be all we want. We finally eat it and then feel like we threw everything out the window! And white knuckling through a dinner out with friends is only going to last a week if not only through appetizers! Let’s clear this up: motivation is not a lack of willpower. We’ll talk more about this later in the article. Suffice to say, the better you understand this, the easier it will be to keep moving in your desired direction.

Contrary to popular opinion, I believe motivation comes from momentum. So often we’re sitting on the couch waiting for lightning to strike, waiting to feel motivated to get up. The motivation to get off the couch only comes after you’ve gotten off the couch enough times for your body and brain to know the feeling that will come after the movement. It’s this craving for that feeling which is the elusive motivation everyone is looking for. To find it, you must do the action, take the steps enough times for your body and mind to recognize the difference it makes. Once we’re in a place of momentum, motivation exists, and we don’t (as easily) get caught in the weeds of details or derailed by bumps in the road. Most of the time we have to do the things?before?we feel truly motivated to do them. Wanting to improve your nutrition? Choose the veggies, keep choosing clean, lean protein, fiber (vegetables and fruit) and quality fat. Once you start to feel better, wake up with energy, no longer need an afternoon coffee or sugar rush,?then?you’ll feel the motivation. Wanting to improve your activity and exercise habits? Put it in your calendar and start doing it. Could be 15 minutes or 20 minutes. Just do something and do it often (daily)! Shift the search from motivation to momentum.

All of this is about making conscious choices every day, towards the directions of our goals, no matter what they are: better health, wellness, eating, sleep, less stress, more movement, you name it. Every day, you’re going to be building momentum towards what you want to achieve until it becomes an unconscious, automatic habit. When life happens (as it always does) you’ll be able to ebb and flow, with motivation to return to your no-longer-new habit.

Another pro-tip? Focus on what you?can do,?will do?and?already did?rather than on anything that didn’t happen. Focusing on this, the positive, turns out to be infinitely?more?motivating, inspiring, and influential than focusing on the negative. And a bonus side-effect is a more positive outlook on life too.

How to Bring Willpower into the New Year

Willpower. It’s complex and an absolute must to talk about, especially early in the New Year. Starting the New Year?is?the motivation for some. Our willpower for a couple weeks is at an all-time high. And then, life returns and sticking with new habits or commitments feels like climbing Mount Everest naked and barefoot. What if it doesn’t have to be this challenging?

To make it all easier, you must better understand willpower and then harness it. To better understand willpower, think of it as a refillable cup. There’s a cup. There’s a finite amount of willpower juice in the cup at any given moment. It is up to you to know what drinks your willpower juice and what refills your cup. Any time you make a choice or a decision, from what to wear, to which route you’ll take to get to work, what to eat (and not eat) all the way to potentially big decisions like whether to hire or fire someone. All these drink the willpower juice. Any time you exercise self-discipline, it drinks the willpower juice. What refills the willpower juice? I’m so glad you asked! For everyone it’s a bit different. There are a few universals like exercise/activity, sleep, and quality nutrition (you need blood sugar to have?any?willpower). Others that might work for some and not for others include, accountability/rewards/consequences, journaling or to-do lists, self-awareness, accomplishing goals, gamification and even giving to charity (time or money). You must remember to refill the willpower cup and do so regularly enough that you have plenty of juice for every moment of self-control and decision making.

The second piece of willpower is harnessing it. Now that you understand willpower is a refillable cup and there are infinitely more situations that drink from the cup than refill it on any given day, what can you do to ensure there’s always juice in the cup when you need it? Those who use willpower most effectively use their willpower to create habits. The more you can do habitually, it happens no matter what, without thought, the less willpower you use. This inherently leaves juice in the cup for those particularly challenging moments.

This January, as your resolutions feel harder and harder to stick with, remember it’s not that you have no willpower. It’s that you need a bit more attention on refilling your willpower cup and using your willpower to create habits so that in time, what was once your New Year’s resolution, is simply who you are and what you do.

Communities

I hate to break it to you…it’s not all about YOU! GASP! Just kidding. But not totally because the people we surround ourselves with have a profound impact on our lives.

If your best friend is the one who tells you to skip the gym to join happy hour, it’s more challenging, isn’t it? Or your significant other, in their own way trying to be supportive, says, just have a few bites “you’ve been so good.” These are people I lovingly call, subtle saboteurs. Think about a line or two you can practice saying in those moments. Alternatively, you may limit the time you spend with these people. You might decide not to share your resolutions with everyone. That’s OK! You can choose who to allow in your inner circle (even the inner circle of specific things), and who you keep at a distance.

What’s more, you may find that with your new habits, you meet some new people. Remember the movie,?Brittany Runs a Marathon? Brittany takes up running, meets new friends from her training group and, over time, spends more time with this crew than her old friends. It’s natural! Who of your current friends help you stick with your new year goals and offer true support? Is there someone who would love to swap recipes? Join you for a workout before brunch? Let’s make more plans with this person! And you never know who you’ll meet when you build new habits, take up new hobbies, and stay consistent. Positive encouragement, compassion and supportive communities are necessary, especially when the new year fog starts to wear off.

This doesn’t mean we have to cut people out of our lives or give up being social altogether. If your plan does not allow you to have a life, it’s not the plan for life!?Check this out?for more tips on having a social life and your health too! Identifying the true supporters from the subtle saboteurs and choosing consciously who you give time, energy, and attention to can pay dividends!

Cheers to the New Year

Whether you’re the kind of person to reinvent yourself every January or you’re the kind of person to have one mission for the year, this can create your best approach to becoming part of the 8–12% of people who stick with their new year goals. Remember, the smallest adjustments can truly make the biggest progress over the course of a year because consistency is king! Motivation can be your best friend or the elusive lightning bug; think more about creating momentum. Willpower is more than overpowering obstacles or feeling like a failure for a less than ideal action. Using your willpower to create habits and intentionally choosing the people around you that can help make all the difference.

Cheers to you and may 2023 be a year of positivity, healthful change, and accomplishing everything you desire!