3 Easy Steps to a Healthier New Year
At the beginning of the year, people start thinking about their goals, resolutions and aspirations for the next 12 months. The gyms fill up with people who want to lose weight, people start cutting back on their vices, and people buy stacks of books in a bid to increase their personal development.
The sad thing is, within 3 months the gym won’t be as packed, those vices will come back stronger than ever, and those books will gather dust. The resolutions go unfulfilled and everything feels like a waste of time. But the problem isn’t the idea of resolutions but the approach we take to them. We come up with resolutions that don’t take into account that it takes a while to build a habit and get it to really ingrain. We say we’re going to run a marathon in two months, read 10 books in 2 weeks and completely give up alcohol, but the problem is these are hard things to do so of course we’ll fall short. To make it worse, when we do fall short we fall into a major guilt spiral that undoes any progress.
So before you think the way you’re going to achieve your goals next year is by setting really big aspirations, consider a different approach that will still get you to the destination, in a healthier and more sustainable way. Think about it: what’s the point of losing a whole lot of weight in a short time if it’s just going to come creeping back because you couldn’t stick to the habit? In this article you’ll learn about more sustainable ways you can start taking better care of yourself in the new year.
Cutting Back
The idea of going cold turkey is enough to scare us into holding onto a bad habit for a lot longer. Some people are capable of doing it, but most people set themselves up for failure when they say they’ll completely stop something, whether it’s eating candy, smoking or any other vice that we enjoy regularly. Instead of choosing to go cold turkey, consider cutting back as the first step to health. Instead of 5 cookies, go down to 2, instead of a pack a day, go down to 3 cigarettes. It will allow you to wean yourself off and slowly get used to the changes, making it less likely that you’ll end up spiralling down and getting back into the habit.
Build Momentum Through Small Actions
If you really want a change in your life to stick, for one simple action to become a lifelong habit and behavior, the habit needs to become ingrained in us. That doesn’t happen overnight, over a few days or even the 21 days people say it takes. It will take up to 90 days for a habit to really become part of us and to become a part of our routine. Expecting a habit to form quickly will only lead to disappointment, frustration and failure. So start with smaller actions and then when you’ve successfully done that, start to build them up. Tell yourself to do 10 minutes of exercise a day instead of an hour, do 3 minutes of meditation instead of 20 and work from there, read for 30 minutes instead of 3 hours. Those small actions will become ingrained and then we can add more time to it. The first thing you need to build is consistency because that’s the true secret to success.
Making Healthier Switches
We are lucky to live in an age where we can easily access healthy alternatives to our favorite vices. There are sugar-free options to drinks and even candy, we can drink nut milk instead of dairy-based stuff. We can vape instead of smoke. You can support sustainable clothing companies. You can have quinoa instead of rice, kale chips and cauliflower pizza crust. You can have easy access to vape products, including this subscription service and community that is better than dollar ejuice club. These are all ways you can bring health into your life without completely getting rid of the things you enjoy. And you can eventually build up to cutting them completely out, but this time there’s a softer place to land between what we are now and what we want to be in the future.
Going into the new year, your main goal should be to become consistent when it comes to the changes you want to make in your life. Big changes are made up of smaller milestones and victories and that’s what we need to set up for ourselves. That way 2019 won’t end with us feeling like we didn’t achieve anything, and no matter what there will be progress and forward movement.
