Our lives are a series of choices that we make from the good to the bad. Everything is about choice. We tell our daughter to make good choices and we strive to make good choices for ourselves. When we make resolutions, we are resolving to make positive choices.
The problem is, too often we get tied up in how to make those choices work for us. It’s easy to say we’re going to make resolution to get fitter. It’s easy to say we’re going to work out in the morning. It’s harder to deliver on what we say. So you may have made a resolution to get fit and you may find that resolution is harder to do than it was to say. With that in mind, here are 10 ways to help you maintain and succeed in your resolution to get fit.
- Visualization – How are you going to look and feel three months after you start working out? How will you feel and look if you don’t?
- Think positively – Failure in the past doesn’t mean you will fail tomorrow. Remember, what happened yesterday, you can’t change, what you do today can affect tomorrow
- Prioritize – How important is your resolution to get in shape? How important is it for you to be healthy? If these are important to you, then give the same level of importance to your workouts you would give to meeting with your boss and a doctor’s appointment or getting your kid to their dance class
- Build Momentum – if you miss a workout, forgive yourself and make it to the next one; the hardest time you have in any fitness program is the first couple of weeks, but by the time you make it to the third week, you have momentum and impetus to make it to the next workout
- Look in the Mirror – Seriously, even after just three or four weeks, take a good look in the mirror, do you see yourself differently? Are you feeling better? Do you look better? It’s amazing the kind of results you can see in just a short time
- Age is not a Factor – One complaint I hear too often is that we’re not as young as we used to be and you’re right, I’ll be 35 this year, that doesn’t stop me from wanting to look and feel your best – so you haven’t worked out since you had your three kids and you haven’t fit into your ideal set of jeans in a decade – it doesn’t matter, there’s no time like the present to reap the benefits of getting physically fit
- It’s Not a Race – You are not competing to be the best or to get a gold medal, the only competition you are in is with yourself and your ego – so win it by not even playing that game, you’re exercising to get fit and to feel better about yourself, not to win a prize – if you need a prize consider how great you are feeling because of your regular workout
- Procrastinators Unite – So you have a hard time making it to your workout or you decide to workout every Sunday night and hit snooze every Monday morning, be honest with yourself – we’re all busy, we all need more sleep, but the truth is, you are better off justifying all the reasons why you’re better off working out than creatively developing the reasons not to
- Remember the Guilt – Guilt plagues our steps when we mess up our workout schedule, you may not realize this but you can feel guilty because you miss your workout or you make some excuse and miss more than one and that guilt will chase you through your day and affect how you interact with everyone around you, so avoid the guilt and forgive yourself for a missed workout, but make it to the next one
- Accentuate the Positive – There’s a truism to the idea that when we focus on all the things we do wrong, we set ourselves up for failure, but when we focus on the things we do right – we’re empowering ourselves to keep succeeding – so focus on what you’re doing right and keep it up
Do you use any of these methods to keep yourself on track to succeed in your resolutions?
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