New Year’s Resolutions: 7 Tips to Achieve your Goals
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New Year’s Resolutions: 7 Tips to Achieve your Goals
by Juliana Gildesgame PT, DPT
The New Year is a time for reflection on the past year and gearing up our hopes for the coming year. The best way to keep a New Years resolution is to set meaningful, realistic goals.
1. Understand why your goal is important to you.
Consider what you would like to change most about your life. Understand precisely what you are hoping to achieve and how you hope it will change your life. Being in touch with the heart of the goal will help you stay focused and on track.
2. Be ready.
Before you can change a part of your life, you have to be ready for the adjustment. Ask yourself if you are truly ready before you get going. That way, once you’ve started progressing towards your goals, you know you’ve thought it through and that this is the right time for you to make important life changes.
3. Be realistic.
Appreciate where you are starting from and how fundamentally you will need to change your life. If you set an impossible goal you will likely be discouraged and unlikely to make any change. If you choose a goal that lacks sufficient challenge, it will be much easier to procrastinate making changes.
4. Set measurable goals.
Define the terms of your goal with objective measurements. Rather than tell yourself you are going to “exercise more,” consider striving to “exercise for thirty minutes, three times per week.” When you can measure your goals, you will know what you need to do to accomplish your goal and you will know how much of your goal you have achieved.
5. Give yourself a time line.
If you make a resolution for the whole year, plan to accomplish your goal by achieving short-term goals. Consider how you will motivate yourself throughout the year. Sit down with a calendar and set incremental goals throughout the year. Then, hang the calendar up somewhere you will often see it often to help you stay accountable.
6. Give yourself positive feedback!
If you don’t achieve the exact goal that you had in mind, don’t despair! It’s not all over if your project temporarily derails. Acknowledge what you have accomplished in addition to noticing your pitfalls. Give yourself the gift of a fresh start each morning
7. Get yourself some theme music.
Let’s face it. It’s hard to take on a new physical challenge. Whether its adding soothing music to your meal times or indulging in some upbeat pop music for the stairmaster, music can help you stay motivated to reach your goals. It is also a way to engage more of you, meaning not just your body, but your brain and your emotions. Treating yourself to some new music may go a long way to helping you to achieve your goals.
Good health impacts our ability to thrive in the workplace, attend to family obligations, and most importantly feel good about ourselves. It is important to choose the appropriate expert to help reach your particular goal.
The Physical Therapists at CCPT are the experts in designing individualized exercise programs that will improve mobility, restore function, increase strength, and prevent injury. CCPT also offers yoga, Pilates, personal training, and Feldenkrais®. Creating goals for yourself is a realistic meaningful way to improve your health and quality of life, let the therapists at CCPT help make your resolutions come true!!
Don’t forget CCPT’s Yoga class and Feldenkrais classes every Tuesday.
