Do you struggle to stick with your New Year's resolutions? Do you have big plans to make the next year a healthier one but you struggle to actually make changes, or you fizzle out on your new habits after only a few months or weeks?
Have you ever tried making your New Year's health resolution a monthly or progressive goal instead? Try one of these methods and see if that helps!
How many times each morning do you hit your snooze button? Did you know that instead of helping you get a few extra minutes of sleep, that snooze cycle most likely makes you feel MORE tired than you would have if you'd just gotten up at your first alarm? It's true!
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First of all, you never need to wait for a new year to make changes in your life. Commit to starting with a new month, or a new week, or a new day. There is no inherent magic in a new year. You can change your life any time you choose! I want you to realize that!
That said, many people are planning to make big changes with the start of the new year. Sometimes, they don't know how to go about it, so that's what I'm doing here.
Health is a very common New Year's resolution, but many people fail to make specific and achievable goals or plans for how to achieve that health they desire.
How to Set Goals
Goals need to be specific. You can't just set a goal of "be healthier" and expect to achieve it. What is healthier? If you have just one more hour of health in 2023 than you did in 2022, that's "healthier," isn't it? But is that all you want?
Goals also need to be achievable. This is why a lot of weight loss goals fail. You can't necessarily control how much weight you lose. There are too many factors that go into that, including your metabolism, hormones, stress level, and more. A better goal would be to commit to a certain number of minutes of exercise each day or week or not eating after 8:00 p.m. or drinking a certain number of ounces of water each day.
All those items will contribute to weight loss, but you control them, whereas you don't control your weight. I know it's a fine line, but I hope that makes sense.
My 2023 Goal
My big goal for 2023 is to experience a new type of natural health contributor each month. I call it a health contributor because my list ranges from therapies like infrared sauna and reiki to nutrition changes like sourdough and raw dairy.
Basically, any new thing I haven’t tried yet that can contribute to my health can go on the list, and each month, I will choose one to experience.
Ideas for 2023 Goals
If you aren’t quite sure what to set for your goals, consider this list inspiration. Add your own measurements to the blanks, or feel free to take any of these ideas and tweak them to your own needs.
- Learn to make a new food from scratch each month of the year
- ___ minutes of fun sweaty activity each day/week
- Drink ___ ounces of water each day
- Identify one supplement you feel would help you and commit to taking it every day for 90 days
- Eat a raw fruit or veggie every day/every meal
- Spend 15 minutes in the sun at least three times a week
- Check in honestly with a trusted friend every week about your mental health
- Spend 3 hours a week with your Creator
- Choose one item of clutter to leave your home each day of the year
- Eliminate products containing fragrance/parfum or foods containing artificial colors
I’d love to hear your goals for the year!
Share them below, and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you reach them!
I want to encourage you because we all need encouragement to keep us going when change is difficult.
Often, I felt like the small steps I was taking were doing very little to affect my overall health.
Was I ever going to actually see any changes?
Were the efforts I was making actually doing any good?
Was it all for nothing?
Should I just give up?
I chose not to give up out of sheer stubbornness! But if that doesn't work for you, I'd like to introduce you to a concept I discovered somewhere along my journey - the 1 degree effect.
Hang with me – we're going back to math class for a moment. I promise, it'll be quick and painless!
Remember that tool we used called a protractor? It was a half circle in shape and had all the degrees from 0 to 180 marked along the edge.
Now, the difference between those degree marks is not very large. They are really close together. When you drew lines from the center point to each of those marks, the lines were almost on top of each other, weren't they?
But ... here's the important part! The further those lines got from the center point, the more space there was between them.
That's the one degree effect.
Put another way, imagine you and your friend are standing side by side, facing exactly the same direction, and you start walking together. You'll continue along side by side, won't you?
But if you turn, so you are facing just a teeny bit away from your friend before you start walking, it changes, doesn't it? At first, it will seem like you're still walking side by side, but little by little, as you keep walking, you will begin to get further and further apart. After you've walked an entire mile, there will be quite a bit of distance between you, and there will be even more at the second mile, and so on.
It is the same concept with adopting lifestyle changes. You make a tiny change, a one degree change, and for a while, it doesn't seem to be making any difference.
Then, you get a bit further along your journey, and you start to see the changes from where you would have been if you hadn't changed that one degree.
You're also likely going to make another one degree change somewhere along the way, and then another, and another, and before you know it, you've made five degrees of change, or even 10 or 20!
It all starts to add up, and when you stick with it, you really start to feel the enormous positive difference that's happened along the way, one degree at a time.
So when you feel like the changes you're working so hard at aren't making any difference, please commit to another day, another week, another month. Over time, I promise, you will start to notice.
Don't give up!
Why do we do it? Make all these healthy choices that seem counterintuitive to what we've been taught? Bypass things we enjoy? Make choices that aren't always easy?
I'll admit, it sometimes seems like there's little benefit.
But I received a really big reminder a few weeks ago of why it is all absolutely worth it.
