Culture
JAM | Jan 1, 2023

5 guaranteed ways to nail your 2023 goals

Zemelyah Shaw

Zemelyah Shaw / Our Today

Reading Time: 4 minutes

One too many of us have fallen into the trap of listing all of our New Year’s resolutions with gusto, excited to begin working on the version of ourselves we wish to identify with completely. Whether it’s to work out regularly, start that business or maybe to spend less time on our phones, we all want to set out to maintain and grow into these pursuits, and if so, why do the gyms go from packed on January 1 to sparsely filled by the time February comes around?

Changing familiar and repetitive behaviours and habits while seeking to add new ones can be extremely difficult.

With the new year now here, to finally achieve what you set out, it’s crucial to figure ways around the unfortunate nature of humans to fall into mediocrity. Want to finally get that dream body of yours? Here are some ways to keep consistent in the year of 2023.

Stop Setting ‘New Year’s Resolutions’

Based on Google, a New Year’s resolution is a firm decision on either new years day or new years eve to do or to abstain from doing something over the course of the upcoming year, sounds harmless and in fact quite positive doesn’t it? Well, technically it is harmless, setting a goal, but it’s more about regarding one’s approach to achieving these goals, which, because of the culture around resolutions, is never the focus. It’s important to focus on the process and not so much the goal. 

Resolutions generally are too vague to be converted into motivated action and therefore the chances of a resolution inciting a sustainable change in behaviour is very small for the majority. According to Time.com, as many as 80 per cent of all persons who set New Year’s resolutions fail to carry it through to the year’s end.

Instead of falling into the trap, create small and doable tasks that will inevitably lead you to your goal. Forbes gives a perfect example of this on their website. The magazine states that starting a blog isn’t doable. Writing five blog posts a month is also not doable. But tasks formulated this way are doable: Write down three blog topics to write or schedule 45 minute a day or a a week to work on blog posts.

Reward Yourself

Celebrate your success by treating yourself to something you enjoy that does not oppose your goal or regress your progress. Instead of buying fast food after a gym session, buy yourself some new gym gear or go to the beach. Rewarding yourself leads to positive reinforcement in your brain and therefore there will be less and less reluctance over time to carry out your goal. Eventually you might even start looking forward to it.

Understanding the Nature of Human Procrastination

Procrastination is defined as the delaying or postponing of something. Constantly putting off your goals is a sure way to eventually stop. To understand how to stop or reduce procrastination, we have to first know why we even procrastinate in the first place. 

While procrastination can be linked to many different things such as: ADHD, depression, anxiety and even low self-esteem, it’s a general preconception that procrastination is connected to some level of negative functioning. There is also an increase in anxiety and stress which feeds negative reinforcement to the brain’s reward system leading to a general avoidance or a dread of following through with whatever you intended to.

“Avoidance is an especially devious trickster. When you avoid something that makes you anxious or uncomfortable (e.g. that email inbox with 2,300 emails) you immediately are rewarded by a decrease in anxiety. If you face the thing that you’ve been avoiding, you immediately experience an increase in distress. In the long run, it’s quite the opposite. Persistent avoidance increases overall anxiety significantly. And facing things you’ve been avoiding eventually leads to a sustainable decrease in tension and anxiety. But to face the things you’ve been avoiding you have to tolerate a short-term increase in anxiety. That is hard to realise and to do.” – Forbes

To overcome procrastination you have to face the discomfort over and over again until it becomes negligible.

Have an Accountability Partner

An accountability partner is one in which you share a mutual partnership  in which you both check in, encourage or exchange honest and helpful feedback as you both move towards similar or different goals. Each member of the partnership commits to coach the other towards achieving their goals and to be held accountable for their progress towards their own. This relationship helps each partner to stick to their commitments. Sometimes we get in our own way, having a partnership aids with staying grounded and motivation in moments where our supply of self-motivation runs dry.

Don’t Beat Yourself Up

 Failure is simply a stepping stone to success, it shapes your success even. The more you are able to embrace your faults and failures, the more equipped you are to not only achieve success but to maintain it as well. Through defeat, we acquire experience, growth, knowledge and resilience. Take one day at a time.

To make this year count we have to embrace the entirety of the process and push forward with understanding and grace towards ourselves.

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