As the year is coming to a close I find myself thinking about a New Year Resolution. Am I going to eat better, give up alcohol, exercise more, be a better husband and dad… there are so many 
possibilities! After all, I always consider myself a work in progress. That’s when it hit me like a brick! Why did I wait until the end of the year to make a resolution? What was wrong with back in June? I wouldn’t have pissed away half a year right?
A resolution at the end of the year seems so hollow to me. How do we know we are ready to make a commitment to a resolution on a certain day? I feel you really need to want to change or do things differently, and it has nothing to do with the calendar. Instead of making resolutions why don’t we concentrate on creating the new habits or dropping the bad habits throughout the year. Maybe we procrastinate and find the new year a fresh start. Every day is a fresh start! Hell, sometimes every minute is a fresh start depending upon where you are in your journey.
So throughout the year maybe we acquired some bad habits. Those were easy weren’t they? It is so much easier to create a bad habit than it is to create a good habit. The reason is simple. It takes much more effort and mental toughness to create a new good habit like working out or eating right. Bad habits just happen without much effort. On the same token, eliminating that bad habit once acquired takes effort as well. Sometimes it seems we can never win against bad habits. It boils down to one simple statement. Once you control your mind, you can control your body. That only happens when we are ready, not on January 1st.
I recently read some statistics on gym memberships after New Years. They say 80% of the new gym members drop off the second week of February. That tells me they weren’t ready and January 1st wasn’t their day to start. Their mind wasn’t in it yet. So if January 1st isn’t the day when is the right time? When you are ready! We know when we are ready to change. Maybe we look in the mirror and think, wow, I packed on the weight! Or maybe we feel drained, with no energy and realize our diet is terrible. We cannot change any habits good or bad until we are truly ready to change.
So how do we eliminate bad habits and create new ones? Well it is easier said than done for sure. While both creating a new good habit and dropping a bad habit both take effort, I think if we can create a new one, the bad ones can take care of themselves and simply go away. A good example would be working out. Why do we want to spend an hour in the gym everyday working out to sculpt our bodies, and then eat a bunch of unhealthy food and negate all of those gains? After a while, we begin to realize our efforts are in vain for the most part. Now this is where it is decision time for us. Do we continue eating like crap or continue to work out and begin to eat right? This all depends on where you are at mentally, not what day of the year.
So we have decided we are ready for a change. How do we get there? Well, you get started that’s how. We do it today, not tomorrow, not next week, not January 1st. Now! You don’t try, you do whatever it takes. We need to write the change down, we need to list the steps we will use the get there, the obstacles we will encounter and what we will do to overcome them. We need to make ourselves accountable to someone for our goals. When you tell someone your plan, and they ask how its going. The last thing anyone ever wants to say is that we gave up. If your goal is to work out every morning make a trigger for yourself. Set out your workout clothes next to your bed so when you wake you see them. If your goal is to eat better, clean out the junk food, shop the outside aisles of the grocery store. Let set ourselves up for success.
They say it takes 21 days to create a habit. I tend to agree with that statistic. But what about getting rid of those bad habits? It takes 1 day at a time. It takes mental will power sometimes 1 minute at a time. I am willing to bet starting the new good habits will make dropping those bad ones much easier or at least less painful.
So make your resolution when you are ready. We need to monitor our progress and adjust as needed. I recently read a quote by Jim Stoppani and it said, “Don’t just MAKE a Resolution, BE the Resolution!”
So let’s go start a new habit, drop the bad ones, and work on what we want to work on. Let’s not wait until the end of the year, let’s do it right away and don’t waste any more time!
Happy New Year!