How to Begin the New Year in a Healthy Way
Healthy living should be a goal we all strive for, not just throughout the holiday season but 365 days out of the year.
During this crazy time with the pandemic, many of the drastic changes in people’s lives and schedules have been daunting and stressful. While it has absolutely been a challenging time, there has been a silver lining to turning inward and spending more time focusing on ourselves and our families. This has looked like many things to people, such as taking on a new hobby or craft, spending more time reading or time in nature, or creating goals to focus on improving overall health and wellbeing. It has been inspiring seeing the goals that people have set for themselves to improve their quality of life, whether that be cooking more at home instead of eating out, incorporating more balance into their diet, making space for meditation or mindfulness practice, starting a new exercise routine, etc. At True Harmony we hope to help support you in whatever goals you may be setting, so here are some tips for creating realistic and sustainable expectations to ultimately succeed with those goals:
START SMALL! When considering making a change, many people have the tendency to dive in headfirst to what they want their outcome to be. Often times these goals are so massive and different from their current lifestyle that they become unattainable, or at the very least not sustainable. For example, when some people are wanting to start incorporating exercise into their routines, they will say “I want to start doing at-home workouts for 30 minutes for 5 days a week.” While that is a great goal to work up to, jumping ahead to that just sets yourself up to get frustrated, and give it up. If you were to start with “I am going to do 15 minute at-home workouts for 3 days a week,” you are more likely to stick with that practice. It also gives you room to slowly increase your goal as you get used to having those changes in your schedule, and keep you moving forward.
BE SPECIFIC! Make your goal as specific as you can. For example, if you tell yourself “I want to eat healthier,” that is very vague and really does not give you any sort of direction on how to make that happen. But if you say “I want to incorporate a vegetable with a meal or snack two times a day,” you now have something concrete to work towards. Another benefit of having a quantitative goal is it makes it easy to gradually increase whatever practice you are working on. So for example if after a while you have met your 2x a day veggie goal, you can increase it to 3x a day, or having a vegetable with every meal.
DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF. We cannot stress enough that every single person is different, and no two people require the same exact things. So when you are setting a goal for yourself, make sure it is centered on your needs, body, schedule, etc. And celebrate when you achieve the goals you set - even if it seems “small” or “not a big deal” it is a huge accomplishment! This can be one of the hardest things to keep in mind in a world where we are taught to compare ourselves, so try to bring in your own self love and positivity as much as you can.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF. We are all human, and it is totally normal to have days where we don’t feel well, or motivated, or have life get in the way. Sometimes this interferes with the goals we set, and times where we are unable to meet them. And that is ok! Try not to see days as “set backs,” rather as times that you are listening to what your body/mind/family needs. The more emphasis you put on missing a day or two, the more likely it is that people drop their goals all together. Just appreciate the good you are doing for yourself in those moments, and give yourself the added motivation to get back into it.
