Video Transcript:
Today, I’m so excited to share with you five impactful ways to keep your resolutions this year. This is really critical, because the average individual who sets a resolution, and even a goal throughout the year, tend to have some sort of failure or fall-off of the follow-through. These five tips are going to help you be more successful, and ultimately achieve those goals so you optimize your wellness and your experience with this New Year’s resolution.
Set a Specific Goal
All right, so tip number one is to get specific, and it goes beyond just having a goal. It is getting really specific with that goal itself. I think what I see in a lot of my patients is that a lot of their goals are not specific enough. For instance, “I want to lose weight this year.” That’s great, but let’s quantify it. One, I always ask is it quantifiable and two, is it achievable?
For instance, maybe some of your goals might require a certain amount of money, and maybe you don’t have that budgeted in this coming year. That’s okay. Maybe you want to push that off to the following year and maybe set the baby-step goal of saving up money for next year’s goal. Those are really two key questions – is it achievable and is it quantifiable?
When we are focusing on quantifiable goals, it’s really, really important to zero in on specifics. For instance, “losing weight” versus “I want to lose 10 pounds,” “I want to lose four inches in my waist,” “I want to bench press X amount of pounds,” “I want to achieve an ability to run a fitness course or some CrossFit program by X date.” Then also, I have a lot of patients that want to have lowered, or balanced, laboratory results. I recommend quantifying that as well. If it’s lowering your blood pressure, lowering your cholesterol, get specific and quantify it.
Create A Plan For Your Goal
Now, number two is the key factor here – planning the goal. You set a very specific, quantifiable, achievable goal. Now we need to plan for it. And planning, I always ask the five Ws. What is it? What is the goal? Actually, this isn’t a W, but there are five questions:
- What is it?
- How do you do it? How can it be achieved? What steps are involved?
- What do you need? What materials? What resources? What equipment might you need? What supplements or food menu items do you need?
- When do you do it? When is this occurring, this goal? How much time are you allocating, or do you need to allocate, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, to focus on achieving your resolution?
- Why are you doing this? What are your motivations?
Understand Your “Why”
I want to go back to some of my additional resources that I’ve mentioned. I really like for folks to vision board, to create an actual, quantifiable list that showcases and demonstrates what those goals are. In vision boarding, creative visualization, is really critical in helping support the why. If we might be looking to save money this year, maybe the why is, “We want to go on a trip.” If we’re looking to lose weight, the why is maybe, “I have so-and-so’s wedding,” or “I am looking to achieve X fitness goal.”
Understanding the why is really important when you get to those barriers of self-doubt, maybe you hit a plateau, maybe this is a significant change and you need that additional motivation. The why is something you can always come back to and it is your purpose and it’s your power, personal power, that you can tap into that gets you there. It gets you in the right mind space to achieve the physical part of your goal.
Keep Track in a Journal
Also, in incorporating planning your goals, I like to recommend folks grab a specific notebook and have that be your either resolution journal or just the journal that you keep that’s specific to these goals, or this goal. To begin with a list, so answer those five questions. Maybe on each page, the first pages, you list on the first page what the goal or goals are. Page two, you write how am I doing it or these. You basically identify lists that might identify all those factors. What do you need? Are there any barriers that you need to be aware of? Anticipating things that might prevent you from achieving success or might be in the past, would’ve prevented you from moving forward with the success of your goal.
Being aware of all of those. Pros and cons lists are very common. Even I have had patients when we’re going through this process, I’ll have them even identify budgets for some of those goals. Some fitness goals do require additional expenses and additional time. All of that is really critical to be aware of, to identify, to chart out, and to list.
Planning, honestly, preparation and planning is really critical. If you’re not prepared for some of the hurdles or roadblocks that might come your way, it tends to be a situation where that is one of the things that’s really where people fall and they fail. I really wanted you to focus on that plan, but really zeroing in on the why. The why are you doing this. Maybe it’s for your kids. You want to be healthy so you’re around to see your kids grow up, your grandkids, to optimize retirement. Whatever it is.
Start Small for Better Success
Number three, this is really important. Start small. I have found that when my patients, and even myself, when I have set new year’s resolutions or any type of life goal, and it’s drastic, it’s really big, in some cases it’s so overwhelming that I don’t get started. With a lot of my patients, their health and fitness related goals can be so drastic. Unfortunately, there can be deprivation. Sometimes it’s caloric deprivation. Sometimes it’s sleep deprivation. Sometimes it is muscular. Just the state of their muscles are not ready yet.
Start small. Slow and steady wins this race. The Turtle and the Hare, I’ve read that story to Gabriel a thousand times, my six-year-old son. You want to be the turtle when it comes to you achieving your resolutions and your goals. The key here, turtles, slow and steady, equals sustainability. It becomes habitual. What we see is that when you create these changes and you are looking at achieving your goals and you track them and you get really zeroed in on that focus, and you’re doing this every day, when you get to the 28 days, you’ve now created a habitual lifestyle change. The habituality is sustainable. It allows you to continue to move forward and achieve those goals. Ultimately, you’ll have greater success. Start small and also, if you need to, break it out into sizeable sections.
Set Reminders for Yourself
Number four is really critical. We need daily reminders. We need daily reminders of why we’re doing this. Going back to the goal planning, why. What’s your why?
In-Your-Face Post-It Notes
Sometimes it’s as simple as putting on… I love post-it notes, friends. I love post-it notes. Make sure you put post-it notes on your list of items to grab this season because you can use post-it notes in really impactful ways as daily reminders.
I have found that when I, and I recommend to patients when they write the goal, or the activity, or the tasks that they have on their resolution list, that if they post it on the mirror where they brush their teeth in the morning and the evening. They post it in their car – dashboard’s really impactful. They also put it on their computer and laptop or whatever workspace they have. That becomes really great because you’re constantly looking at that when you’re brushing your teeth, you can now go into a meditative, kind of goal-focused state, where you’re focused on, “Okay, what’s my why? I’m doing this for X, Y, and Z. I need to do X, Y, and Z.” It’s on your mind first thing you when you wake up. It’s on your mind the last thing on your mind before you go to bed. That really helps incorporate that focus. Post-its are great to use.
Use Phone Apps, Vision Boards, and Journaling
Phone apps are great. I’ve detailed that as well, some information for you guys, as well as vision boards. Use the vision boards. You can post those at work and actually we used to do this when I was in the corporate world, before I got into natural medicine. We would, as a company, we would have each individual create vision boards. We had a very metaphysical group vice president. We would do these like group effort vision boards. We’d have individual vision boards and then we’d present to our team and then we’d have an overall group vision board. I tell you what, we were highly successful when we were doing that. Also, consider journaling. Journaling can be very impactful. I love the five-minute daily journal that tends to be gratitude-oriented, but it also allows you to notate the goals that you achieved and tasks that you did to achieve those goals.
Set Realistic Expectations for Yourself
Five, last and final, is set realistic expectations for yourself. This becomes really impactful when we are looking at some of these big lifestyle changes. If you have never worked out or you haven’t trained for a marathon before, or whatever that goal might be, and it’s new, I want you to make sure you give yourself daily grace. It’s okay if you didn’t hit X, Y, and Z reps. It’s okay if you didn’t achieve all of the micronutrient density, or you skipped a keto day or whatever it might be. Patience with your body is going to be really critical in helping you achieve that goal. Our body time, especially in the health and fitness world, our body time does not operate on human time. Our body time is a lot slower. It takes months sometimes to realize some of these changes. Sometimes you just have to have faith that your body will achieve those goals. You might not see it. Kind of put aside the whole instant gratification and needing to see inches and the scale moving and really focus in on giving your body the grace and space to achieve these goals.
Resolution setting, goal-setting, is a process. It’s daily and it needs to be, again it’s sizable and achievable. It’s a behavioral change and behavioral changes do not happen overnight. It’s a process, and it will be a process that you encounter for the rest of your life. Especially if you are adding 80% greens and whole fresh food, or making a change in addressing heart disease, or trying to really support your body and your muscle mass so you reverse osteopenia or osteoporosis, or achieve a big goal, either financial or personal, just know slow and steady wins the race. Have faith in your body and give yourself grace.
Those are my five tips. I’m so excited to celebrate the new year with you. I know you are going to do it. Have faith in yourself. You deserve all the success in the world.
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Video Transcript:
Keeping Resolutions Fresh
Today, I want to share with you three ways for you to renew, rejuvenate, and invigorate your New Year’s resolutions. This is really critical because the average American New Year’s resolution-setter will usually fail within 10 days of New Year’s Day. These three tips will be very resourceful for you in deploying your New Year’s resolution for the long term.
Set Your Intention by Creating a Vision Board
So I’m very excited to share with you tip number one is to create a vision board, to create intention around your resolution. Now, when I say vision boarding, I want to detail what that means. That is creating either cutouts via magazines or posting a board up near where you work, and even in your car or places where you’re going to frequently see your, we call them, goal boards or vision boards. Essentially, you’re going to create images or write down words that magnify that goal. They symbolize what you are seeking to achieve, and they also set the right mindset and the intention, because where the mind goes, the body follows.
And with a lot of health-related New Year’s resolutions, we need to get the mind in the right frame of mind. We need to set your intentions so that you are going to be successful on this resolution journey. And that involves having a plan, having a roadmap, making sure you’re able to achieve the goals that you set with regard to your New Year’s resolution.
Now, there is an amazing book that is always my reference guide, and it is called Creative Visualization. It’s by an amazing author. Her name is, she has since passed, but her name is Shakti Gawain. And friends, she has a whole chapter about how to create vision boards and essentially to visualize, create that mindset, the intention that’s going to support and surround your goal and uplift it so that it is achievable.
So definitely check out Shakti Gawain’s book, Creative Visualization is amazing. For me personally, it was life-changing.
Who Is Your Accountability Partner?
All right, so tip number two, to rejuvenate and help you refocus this new year. I want you to seek out an accountability partner. This could be a person or a group that you can constantly, frequently, daily, weekly, throughout the month, check in on, because you are not an island and with any type of resolution, behavioral change, modification of a lifestyle, that we usually see with New Year’s resolutions, it requires support. And when you are anchored in supportive community – often community doing the same thing, setting the same goals – you’ll be surrounded by like-minded people with the same intention. So this is really critical.
I want to share with you a few additional resources that you might add to your accountability team. This might be a health coach. It might be a nutritionist. It might be a fitness instructor. It might be a therapist. It might be a doctor, anybody in the area of expertise. And this goes beyond just that accountability partner where you’re checking in and touching base with them, but they are individuals that will be able to give you tools, expert tools, to help you make your goals achievable. That creates that realization of the intention. They help align you, and then you have the support of individuals like yourself, who are engaging on this journey.
Now, one of the other things that I recommend is also seeking out groups, like Facebook groups tend to be very impactful, and I do want to provide one note of caution, is that I usually recommend seeking out like-minded individuals as your accountability partners, as well as a team of experts that can lead you towards that goal with tools and resources and expertise. Sometimes that might not be a family member, and that’s okay. Family members do… I think it is important that you tell your family members, your spouse, partner, your kids, even your colleagues, that you have this intention, but they might not be able and equipped with the right tools to help you succeed. So definitely be mindful of that.
Tools For Success
And third, so you want to grab your phone and I’m going to share with you my four technology apps that will help you have the most effective tools online to achieve your goals. And this is very broad in terms of the capacity of these tools, but I really like to pair up your intention with your accountability partners, that you’re gaining with expertise, but technology can bring that to the forefront on a daily basis.
A Popular Goal-Setting App with Reminders
So my first app that I love is an app called Strides, and that is something you find in Apple apps, as well as Android. And this is specifically directed at daily goals. It actually comes with a huge amount of recommendations. I think it has 4.8 stars in the Apple store, I just checked recently. And The New York Times has mentioned it to be one of the most creative, one of the most comprehensive, mind and goal-setting apps.
So it allows you amazing capacity and tools. You can set a daily routine. It gives you the checklist. So if you say my goal is to hydrate properly, drinking X amount of water, and I want to work out X amount of days. You have the ability in this app to track and to put in the days that you’re working out. So it’ll show up as your day. You have charts that you can view your progress. It gives you reminders, which are awesome because a lot of times our days go by and then we forget to drink water or to schedule the fitness routine, or exercise, or whatnot. The progress reports also are a form of accountability. And I just really love this app.
App to Track Your Daily Goal Achievements
My second app is a newer app. It’s called Way of Life. And Way of Life is really another tracking tool, but it gets really into intentional creation of lists and goals that you have. And that’s really critical because we need… For instance, in the app, you can have your daily goal is work out, drink water, if you’re doing things like saving money or setting certain additional goals, you can put those in there and it will allow you to see and record as you are achieving those. So, it’s a great reminder and our phones can be resourceful in this category.
App to Calm Your Mind and Reduce Stress
Another app that I have recommended forever is called Headspace, and Headspace is a very popular app that is focused on meditation. And so if you’re looking to calm your mind, reduce stress, if that’s one of the goals this year, Headspace is going to be very impactful.
I think across the board, everybody should be checking out and using Headspace as an app. They’re short and sweet meditations. And in my world, I need short and sweet, concise – 10, 15, 20 minutes. That’s all the time I have. And I have patients who will use Headspace to help them get into a calm state so they sleep better. That can be another tool. So, it is amazing for helping you achieve some of those health-related goals.
This Tool Helped 80% of Users Achieve Their Fitness Goal
And then my last and final is My Fitness Pal. That’s another app, and all of these you can find in Apple and Android. And this tends to be the app that you want to download if you’re looking at achieving fitness goals, or you’re looking at having weight loss as part of your New Year’s resolutions. I am excited to report to you that the individuals who have downloaded and actively use this app, My Fitness Pal, the individuals who’ve used it in the first week of either setting their goal intention or around New Year’s, 80% have achieved the weight loss and have successfully achieved the goals that they set for themselves from a fitness perspective. That’s really amazing. And they actually tout that through all of their users, they’ve had over 200 million pounds lost by folks using this app.
So those are four tools that I hope you’ll check out. And I just want to remind each and every one of you, a lot of my patients I see, they tend to set really lofty goals and success really comes down to what feels comfortable with you. If you think, oh my gosh, this is a stretch for a goal, that’s okay. And I’m going to share with you some additional tips in some of my future communication here, but I really want you to know that your goals are individual and they work for you. They don’t have to work for anybody else.
And so I want to encourage you to put yourself as a priority this coming year. You are worthy of this attention and you deserve success. So hats off to you. I hope you’ll consider these tips, and I’m really excited to hear on the other side of the new year, how things go for you. So keep me posted. Thank you and Happy New Year.
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