New Year Resolutions .... Did You Set Any??

New Year resolutions - what's up with them? Did you set any?
If you did - are you still sticking to them a month later?


Where did they come from?
well - around 4,000 years ago Babylonians made promises to their gods at the beginning of each year and they would settle their debts and return borrowed items - good theory to have to be giving things back to who they belong and to be settling debts but do we put it into practice?

I DON'T make resolutions

I DO set goals.  Goal setting when you are on a weight loss or fitness or health journey is so important.

Goals in the dictionary are defined as the object of a person's amition or effort; it is the desired result. For the kind of goal, I'm talking about it would be that a goal is the destination of a journey.

So what is YOUR destination?
Where do YOU want YOUR goal to take you?
What is YOUR end goal?

from http://www.goalisthejourney.com/

You might be wondering why I stressed the word YOU there.  Here is why - ultimately the whole point of this journey is based on you.  It isn't for anyone else but yourself.

 People can say that they started their journey to health because of their kids or for someone else that they love but if you don't do it primarily for yourself you will not achieve your goal and that can lead to feelings of failure.

Don't let that stop you.  Many times we will 'fail' when working towards our goals and that is ok - we are human, we have times when we are going out for dinner and we want to enjoy ourselves ... ENJOY YOURSELF and don't feel guilty about it, because then you won't really have enjoyed it.  If you know that you are going out then maybe reduce the treats you would normally give yourself.

When I know that I am going out at the weekend or having people over for dinner and I don't want to eat something different, through the week I will be extra strict so that I know that I have worked really hard for my extra treat at the end of the week.

So what should YOUR goals be? 

Why not set your ultimate goal so you know where you want to end BUT between now and the end goal set yourself lots of mini goals ... set small achievable goals that you can smash out of the park and encourage yourself to keep going.  As the quote above says - don't change the goal just increase your effort.  With each mini goal smashed you will find that you have more determination and motivation to get to your big goal.

Have you ever found that people have told you 'there is no way that you will do that!' and then laughed at you for even talking about it? 

That will happen.  It happened to me so many times.  It did have something to do with the fact that I had said I was going to lose weight so many times before. 

                                     

It still hurt my feelings BUT I knew that this time was different for me, I was determined and I wanted to do it for ME! I had enough of feeling like a beached whale and I hated that my clothes didn't fit me and that I couldn't walk the length of my own body or climb stairs without being totally out of breath.  

So what did I do? and what do I recommend YOU do? 

3 things and they are 1. Set a Goal 2. Tell the world 3. Walk your Talk  

It's no good setting your goal or telling everyone ... when you actually walk the talk then people will see that you really mean business and that you really do want to reach the goal that you said.  

This year I have done another goal heart (well a page with my goals) that I want to achieve for this year.  why not give this exercise a go too?  and share them with me ... I'd love to see them and maybe even put some up here too.