Let’s be honest it’s not as easy as we would like to think it is to stick to our goals. It’s the same old song for most of us. We start out with very clear and specific goals that we want to achieve.
Once we actually begin the process of working towards them, we start out really strong. That momentum may last about a week or two, but eventually we hit a wall. Once that wall has been hit our momentum begins to slow down, and once that happens some of us just abandon ship altogether.
In the end we don’t achieve any of the goals that we set. Instead, they just get pushed back further away and becomes all the more daunting for us to work towards.
I’ve been down this road many times before. If I’m being honest it’s a very natural part of the health and wellness journey. You’d be a fool to believe that you were going to get everything right the first go round. This is because our bodies are not the only part of us that is undergoing a change.
Our minds and emotions are as well. This naturally makes your first attempt at reaching for your goals challenging because you don’t know what to expect mentally, physically, and emotionally. Whenever we are faced with something new there are two things that always happen.
In the beginning we embrace the challenge and actually look forward to being an active participant for it. Once we get a little taste of what the challenge has to offer, we get this overwhelming instinct to run for the hills because we trick ourselves into believing that at some point we will fail.
So we enter this fight or flight mode where we’d have save ourselves from failure rather than risk it for the biscuit. I’m telling you not to run, and here’s why.
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The truth about goals
Goals are meant to be challenging. They are meant to improve and better us in some way. If you set a goal and it’s too easy of an accomplishment for you to achieve, it wasn’t challenging enough. If you set a goal that no matter how hard you work towards it you can’t achieve it, you’ve overshot your shot.
The middle is where we want to be when it comes to our goals. We want to set goals that are going to make us work hard to achieve, but also goals that we realistically can achieve with all the hard work and effort we are going to put in to get there.
If you’re right there are the sweet spot then the real challenge has yet to reveal itself.
The real challenge when it comes to our goals is staying committed to them. The easiest part of any goal is starting. When you start you literally hit the ground running, you’re filled with so much hope and inspiration, and there almost seems like nothing that can stop you.
However, once you dive a little deeper into your goals you may begin to hit some roadblocks. New challenges are going to appear, your momentum is going to slow down, you are going to lose that motivation, and you are even going to start making excuses for why you can no longer continue going forward.
The reality is that everything you will experience will feel as though you’re getting nowhere working towards those goals. When in fact you’re getting farther than you may have given yourself credit for. It’s only getting harder because your mind and body are adjusting to the new discipline you have incorporated into your life.
This is the mind and body’s way of telling you that it feels great, give us more, but at the same time let things go back to the way they once were.
Ignore those thoughts, feelings, and impulses. Or at least the ones that are telling you to go back to the way things once were. If you turn back now it’ll only be that much harder for you when you begin again. Instead, acknowledge how you’re feeling. Acknowledge those thoughts and impulses, and challenge yourself to push beyond that.
You can do this by changing the narrative around what it actually means to stay committed to yours goals. Here are three ways to do so!
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3 ways to stay committed to your health and wellness goals
1.Remember your why
This is so important. It’s so easy to get to a certain point on your health and wellness journey and forget why you started to begin with. Maybe you lose a little bit of weight, tone your body up some, see a major increase in your confidence, or become way too comfortable with practicing yoga daily that you just lose sight of your why.
It’s important to always remember what your why is because it will continue to serve you as you move forward on your journey. Even if you change your why many times during the process, always remember what it is.
That way when you feel yourself slacking a little in the workout routine, or you are not taking the time to engage in a self-care routine before bed, you remind yourself of why you started to begin with.
What made it important to you? What made now the right time to start doing these things?
We have to constantly keep our main motivation at the forefront of our minds.
There will be times when you think you have done enough and you just want to pause for the time being. You will have moments when you don’t feel motivated or inspired to put in the hard work, so you’ll tell yourself that taking a break for a day or two won’t hurt you. You will even experience the false belief that you’ve pushed yourself to you limit, and use that as an excuse to then go easy on yourself.
When these challenges appear, you have to stay strong.
Take yourself back to the day when you made the commitment to yourself and let that spark a new fire in you. If that reason no longer serves a purpose for you, redefine a new one. Either way don’t ever lose sight of the reason behind the motivation to reach new heights. You’ll only be cheating yourself out of a good thing if you do.
2. Find that unconditional supporter
This is something new that I have been discovering so far for the year of 2020. I use to just make goals and set out to achieve them all on my own. They were always a secret and if anyone ever found out about them, I downplayed them big time! Little did I know that I was actually causing myself more harm than good in the long run.
You need a support system of some sort, or at least someone who supports you strongly. This is because when you do experience the moments and need to just throw in the towel, you are going to want to have somebody who is going to root for you to do otherwise.
And not just anyone, but someone who really believes in your purpose. This will make the journey seem a lot less lonely, and increase your confidence to be able to get where it is you want to be. However, there are some things to keep in mind when finding that supporter of yours.
First things first, you want to make sure that they are on the same page as you. These health and wellness goals are yours to achieve. Your supporter needs to understand that. Even if you are chasing after goals that they don’t necessarily agree with, it’s not their place to try to tell you otherwise.
Instead, a good supporter will support you in whatever it is you want to do, while also kindly expressing their concerns, but never with the intent of steering you in the other direction. This is key because once your journey becomes about pleasing someone else it has completely lost all meaning and you’ll find yourself back at square one anyways.
The second thing to keep in mind about your supporter is that they must walk with you on the journey, not just stand by your side. What I mean by this is that you want someone who will actively and happily participate in various activities with you, and not just someone who stands by and watches.
If you’re going to yoga and they are able to attend, encourage them to participate with you. If you’re trying out a new wellness routine, ask for their input about what they find to be most effective for them. If you want to try a healthier version of your favorite food, share that meal with them.
A true and genuine supporter is going to experience these changes with you so that you don’t feel as though you are out on a log all on your own. If they show no interest in wanting to support you in such ways, they are probably not the person you should be leaning on for the course of this journey.
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3. Don’t be too hard on yourself
Guilty yet again. I’m so hard on myself and I think a lot of us will say that we are our hardest critics.
The way I see it this can be good or bad, but in terms of reaching specific health and wellness goals it could potentially be very harmful. If you’re the type of person who likes to get it right the first go-round you are in for a rude awakening.
When you first start your health and wellness journey there is going to be so much that you don’t know! You’re not going to know right off the back how your body is going to react to a new workout routine. You will not know how you mind is going to adjust to meditating every morning before starting your day. You will not know how many miles you may or may not be able to actually walk before your body starts to buckle in.
There will be so many new experiences for you right off the back that you’ll be forced to take a step back and take everything in slowly.
When this happens don’t turn away from it. Don’t try to run and hide, and most certainly don’t try to pretend it’s not happening. Instead, look the challenge right in the eye and have confidence that you’re ready for it. Don’t overestimate your ability and don’t underestimate the challenge itself.
Instead, you have to trust that you were made for pushing past the roadblocks that try to stand in your way, and just choose to move forward no matter what fears or uncertainties may wait for you ahead.
In other words, don’t be too hard on yourself.
We’re not meant to have it all figured out, and nothing we do in life is meant to be easy. If this was the case, we’d all be living our dream lives to its full extent. But we all aren’t, hell half of the human population isn’t. This is because we tend to put way more pressure on ourselves to succeed in the beginning, that we end up being way too hard on ourselves when things don’t play out the way we had hoped they would.
For example, back when I used to use the scale as a measure of my success, I was always putting pressure on myself to succeed in weight loss. If I had set a goal to lose 7 pounds in a week, exercised religiously, ate super clean, got plenty of sleep, and drank plenty of water, and by the end of the week I had only lost 2 pounds…I kid you not it was the end of the world for me.
I would spiral out of control emotionally which would have a direct negative impact on me physically, and I’d give up completely spiritually, which negatively impacted me mentally. And I would circle the drain of negative thoughts and emotions until I believed I was ready to get back up again.
Don’t do this to yourself!
I know it’s easier said than done but you have to be open and honest with yourself in the beginning. This is accomplished by ensuring you have an understanding that there will be leaps and bounds on this journey, but there will also be many setbacks along the way. While the tough self-love may seem like a good approach the reality is that it’s not.
The harder you are on yourself the more stress and pressure you will feel to succeed. If those goals aren’t reached, you’ll only discredit everything you worked so hard for. So, practice kindness and self-love before setting out to achieve your health and wellness goals, it will serve you greatly.
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Conclusion
It’s never easy embarking on a new journey filled with new goals. This is because you just never know what you’ll get as a result of it. However, having specific goals and a game plan to reach them in the beginning will set you up for success right off the back. The hardest part of the entire journey will be having the motivation to keep going when it starts to get hard.
To help you along the way keep these tips at the forefront of your mind:
- To know what your why is
- Know who you biggest supporter is and ensure they are indeed supporting you unconditionally
- Practice kindness and compassion with yourself because the journey will not be easy
I’ve been following this mindset for a couple of months now and it has been creating wonders for me and my health and wellness journey so far. I hope by adopting this mindset serves you greatly too.
-Xo
Kimora