set resolution. fail. repeat.

by sarah selip

Dear Reader,

Be brutally honest.

Have you already broken your New Year’s Resolutions? Like, that 5:30 AM daily workout when you haven’t woken up earlier than 9 AM since Christmas? Dry January? Whole 30?

A trickle of transparency here. I’m terrible at maintaining them. Sure, I’ve done Dry January more than once, but I’m not the person who changes everything about my life just because the ball dropped.

Here’s the hard truth about New Year’s Resolutions. You won’t change your life without changing your lifestyle. That requires many things but, above all else, mindfulness.

Say you pledged to hit the gym and work out every morning before heading into the office, starting on January 2nd (because, you know, hangover). You'll get hurt if you haven’t hit the gym in a while and go full force in a workout to say you can cross it off your to-do list. I’ve been in that exact situation, and it took a few months to recover fully.

You will get burnt out and fast if you go full throttle to achieve a New Year’s Resolution. It’s about consistency and adaptation to fit your lifestyle. You can’t drop everything to become “That Girl” overnight or master pilates in one morning. And, sorry, to all of you who added this to your list of resolutions, it will take a while to wean yourself off coffee.

My suggestion is to consider breaking your goals down by months or quarters. For instance, “I will place 3 op-eds in a local paper by March,” or “I will run a 5k in May,” or even, “I will be a certified Pilates instructor by the end of the year.” You can’t build Rome in a day, and you shouldn’t put all of that weight on your shoulders.

If you want to set and achieve a goal, make sure you’re disciplined and hold yourself accountable.

• Accountability leads to action.

• Action leads to consistency.

• Consistency leads to growth.

• Growth leads to achievement.

If you treat your Resolution like something like a “pie in the sky” objective, a “moon shot goal,” or “Hail Mary” call to make some major changes in your life, sorry to burst your bubble, but you’ll probably miss, and probably fail.

If you want to lose weight to be healthy, how can you reclaim the initiative of your life if you can’t define what “healthy” is or what “healthy” means to you? Initiative is about living with intention.

To quote my alma mater’s motto: “Forward, always forward, everywhere forward.”

Achieving your goals is the marathon to New Year’s Resolutions’ sprint.

Simply put, as my close friend always says, “a little bit a lot.”