Setting Yourself Up For A Great Year – Part 2
In my last blog post, I offered some tips on setting yourself up for a great year. In part 2, I go through a few more to ensure you create an environment and mindset for success.
Choose easy goals – YOU don’t get paid for being fit! (athletes excluded)
I’ll keep this section brief. Using goals to keep you on track over your journey to long-term health is great.
Set goals that are too easy to achieve, if you’re just getting started, and I mean easy. Don’t make a New Year’s resolution to exercise 5-days a week every week for the year, or to do 20 sit-ups every morning, or be alcohol-free. Why? As soon as you miss a beat it’s hard to not feel like a failure. This feeling can spiral out of control and is why most resolutions fail by February.
Instead, set easy goals. This might be to do 1- sit up a morning Monday to Friday. I mean we all have time for that! What you’ll start to notice is you may do 2, 5, or even 10 one morning. You’ll feel great and motivated for the next day because you started small and succeeded.
My pet hate is people waiting for Monday or a new year to start their new goal. This is when you know you have set the bar to high and are trying to muster up the motivation to attempt it. Do yourself a favour and lower the benchmark. Make it possible to achieve it and raise it slowly when you’re ready. (Professional athletes you’re the exception, you need to set high goals)
Write down an easy goal and stick it next to your “why”. So now you have your “why” and your “how” with a simple goal.
Find an accountability buddy
Pick a person you know well enough who will train with you and keep you accountable. Now, this needs to be someone who is fitter and stronger than you. Picking someone fitter than you is the key here; don’t pick your mate Barry who drinks beer like it’s going to run out next week.
Make a verbal commitment to someone more “motivated” than you. Someone who will hold you accountable, which benefits both you and them.
If you don’t have a person like that in your life, join a group or fitness facility (like paying a membership). join a swim squad, or run club and make some new friends who enjoy exercise. These are great people to be around, which takes me to my second final point
Choose your environment
Motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” in my mind, no truer words have ever been spoken.
Study your current environment (people you work, live, or catch up with) and see if you can find a trend. Are you surrounded by go-getters, entrepreneurs, ambition, and thinkers? Or are you surrounded by party animals, drinkers, and bad eaters?
Finding and surrounding yourself with people who will help you achieve your goals is as just as important as your finding your “why”.
Now I know you can’t pick your family, but you can pick everything else, and as meatloaf said 2/3 isn’t bad! If your friends drink every weekend or your work crew always has Friday beers, you have a choice. It’s either time to slowly migrate to people who make you better or keep doing what you’re doing and accept the consequences.
I’m not saying to never speak to your mates again, but you either help them with their health journey, which by the way is very effective at helping you too or understand they will hold you back and make it more difficult for you to achieve your health and fitness goals.
Get it out of the way!
Being someone who trains 6-7 days a week to achieve the goal of competing as an Ironman at the world championships in Hawaii, I can surely attest to the stress of not getting a workout done early in the day.
Like you, I’m very busy, and as of the last 3-years I’ve made a massive personal shift from being a late riser (6:30/7am) to an early rising (4:30/5am). What I noticed was; as life got busier, exercise would take a back seat because work came first, and missing my training stressed me out the most.
The fact that I would miss exercise and that it would cause me stress is an ironic cycle that needs to be broken. If you’re someone who wakes up at 7am, stop wasting your morning! Get to bed an hour earlier, and get some movement done first thing. Once you can develop this habit over a few weeks, your life will change for the better and you won’t look back.
If you have kids, you may already be up, so get them involved in some way. Leading by example is the best thing for your kids, and also ties nicely into my previous point.
So to summarise: Make a plan, change your environment, choose an easy goal, get an accountability buddy, get out of the way early in the day, and execute.
You’ll be amazed at who you become and who you inspire. There is also a good chance of a global pandemic again in your lifetime, so start your preparation now 😉
Book in with a coach who can create an individualised program based on your own goals and ability and who can keep you accountable on your journey.
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