Where do we go wrong?

A New Year Resolution is supposed to be your opportunity to make a change or a shift in your life. All too often we make that change for a week or two and then just give up. What went wrong?

1) Your goal was too big or extreme. When we are setting goals for ourselves, we tend to over compensate for the lack of action in the past. We think that we can go straight to running a 5K race, when we haven’t even been for an exercise walk in 5 years. Create realistic goals, and you will achieve them while building your confidence in being able to achieve more later.

2) You give up after a mistake.  When we are working on our goal, there will be days that we don’t do as well. Maybe we don’t stick to our diet and eat a donut. Then we tell ourselves that we have ruined it and might as well just quit. But this doesn’t have to be the case. I suggest two things. One: allow for the chance to eat the items that you love. Allowing means that you are more likely to stick to your plan. Two: Just because you had one thing that doesn’t get you to your goal, doesn’t mean you can get right back to your plan. You didn’t ruin all of your progress with one donut. 

3) You beat yourself up for a mistake. When we are going on a new health journey, we are bound to make mistakes along the way. This doesn’t mean we are bad people, or that we are failures. It simply means that we need to reevaluate what caused the mistake, and maybe even adjust the plan.

Mistakes happen! Give yourself grace!