It’s Jan 31st. The last day of the year. Raise your hand if you’re still going strong with the New Year’s resolutions you set 31 days ago?
If you have, hey good job I’m so proud of you! Heck if you even have one of them going strong great job. You should be very proud of yourself. Research shows how many of these resolutions are maintained as time goes on:
– past the first week: 75%
– past 2 weeks: 71%
– after one month: 64%
– after 6 months: 46%
So the odds are still against us. Yikes. As of today I’m heading on to the 64%. Wondering what my New Year’s resolutions were?
- Get fit. Specifically lose 50lbs.
- Read 12 books this year (at least).
- Save more. (I have a specific number.)
- Write at least 4 blogs a month.
So far this year I’ve kept 3 out of 4. I’ve gone to the gym more times than I think I went in 2018 this year. I know, tisk tisk. Ok maybe exaggerating or maybe not. But I’m working on self-care and this one is a huge one for me. I’m already seeing the benefits of this in my life. I’m more at peace, less stressed, more energetic. I’ve lost 7lbs so far this year! I workout really hard and reward myself in the sauna for 15mins while I complete my number two.
Read. I’m almost done with my first book of the year which is “It’s not supposed to be this way” by Lysa TerKeurst. You can order it here. Hopefully in January I can get that goal going stronger and read more.
My husband and I set an amount we’d like to save this year and we’ve put money towards that already. So I’m feeling strong there too.
I’m working on the last one. I wrote officially 2 posts in January. I started a little late but hey here we are! I looked back at my goals and realized number four wasn’t happening because I wasn’t planning for it. So I did this week and here we are!
There’s two things I’ve done to keep my goals or New Years resolutions going.
1.Have an inspiring quote or bible verse of the year.
This isn’t a rushed decision. You must spend some quiet time thinking and meditating on what that will be for YOU. It will help you keep on track when you feel like giving up. My quote of the year is “I want to see what happens if I don’t give up.” That’s it. Simple yet powerful, to me. I wanna see what happens if I don’t give up to get fit, read, save money and write.
2. Break down your goals and be clear.
I started off by saying I want to lose 50lbs then ok what does that look like if I break it down? 50lbs/12months = 4.17lbs per month. I have to lose 4.17 lbs every month to stay on track. That’s how I can keep myself accountable and have clear expectations of myself and experience small wins along the way to the big win. I did the same with the other goals. Try that and you’ll feel like your goals are way more attainable than you think.
These are just two ways I’ve found to really help me attain what I want to attain this year so far. If you’ve completely stopped or didn’t even start, don’t worry. You can always start now. Instead of dividing the goals by 12 months you can do 11. Tomorrow is a fresh new start to a new month. Knowing I’m going into that 64% I don’t want to fall back now. So join me. When June comes around I want to see what happened because I didn’t give up. Will you?
