How To Get Back On Track With Your New Year’s Resolutions: 6 Pieces of Advice From An Expert
Forming new habits isn’t as easy as it sounds. Bazaar speaks with Performance Coach Blake Sergeant on how to stay inspired when it comes to the promises you made yourself back on January 1…
The New Year has come and gone. Your promises to make leaps and bounds into a promotion at work have fallen by the wayside. Your shiney new gym weights are collecting dust in the corner of your apartment. And all those Italian language books you ordered online have remained untouched. So… now what?
Speaking with Performance Coach Blake Sergeant, establishing reachable goals and maintaining the motivation to achieve them are two different feats. What’s more, we’re wired to fail.
Having pushed professional athletes and entrepreneurs alike to reach their full potential, Blake has laid out gems of wisdom on how to set realistic goals to push us closer to our dreams. Here are his tips to dust off your resolutions and reignite the self-love. After all, you owe it to yourself.
You Are Designed to Fail
You are designed to fail. Yup, that’s right, let it sink in; your brain has no interest in doing anything new or smashing big goals. The old ‘chimp’ part of your brain has the role of keeping you safe; so, if you have a roof over your head and food on the table, there is no incentive to do anything new. In fact, your chimp’s job is to keep things the same, keep you in your comfort zone and to protect the status quo.
Whilst the modern part of your brain (frontal lobes) sets goals, your chimp part (Limbic) gets to work pulling in the opposite direction. What many of us experience in the weeks that follow New Year’s Day is the internal equivalent of a tug-of-war with a lot of internal anguish and almost zero movement.
Get Down to Basics
If you’ve disappointed yourself year after year with unfilled resolutions, let’s abandon the grand plan and commit to the basics.
The key to success and fulfillment are ‘daily’ measures. When we can show up each day and commit consistently to the basics, we build a foundation for greatness. By doing the basics we build a sense of self-worth and we start to find happiness and joy in the simple things rather than trying to buy temporary happiness from a Michelin meal or dream holiday.
When you can find contentment in a cup of coffee, joy in a conversation and peace in nature, your life can magically become everything you wanted because you’ll find happiness within.
Approach your goals monthly and keep it simple; start with aiming is to get the basics right. When you “show up” consistently, as the best version of yourself, the rest will follow.
Take Action
Goals are achieved through action, not planning. Olympic medals are won through daily training — not one big effort — and, as such, your life is created through your consistent daily actions and attitudes.
Even if it feels uncomfortable, unnatural, down right annoying or inconvenient make it a priority to take action and actually do what needs to be done in order to achieve your goal (i.e. working out for 30 minutes if you’re trying to lead a healthier lifestyle.) Once the action is complete you will almost certainly feel a sense of accomplishment which, in return, will motivate you to stay on track.
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Visualise Your Goals
I have a list of goals and, yes, I practice visualising them. The value of visualisation comes from familiarising your chimp consistently with your vision/dreams so that we trick the chimp into believing these are already in our comfort zone.
Do not stop at visualising! The law of attraction is only one of the laws of success. Dreaming of your goal alone will not make it so, we must take massive daily action towards our goals and those must start with the basics.
Tackle 2021, One Month at A Time
What simple actions will you commit to for the month? Ask yourself these questions to identify the basics that make the difference for you.
Who are you when you’re at your best?
What brings you joy?
What are the daily actions you take to be at your best?
What are the actions you need to avoid?
Pick 3-5 daily/weekly simple actions, write them on your fridge and get to work.
Success Is In The Journey
The victory comes from following the process of goal attainment not the setting or even achievement of the goal. The value is in the person you become by how you choose to show up each day.
Your chimp cannot rebel against simple daily tasks that you’ve done before but, as we stack these habits, before long, you’ll find yourself showing up as the person you always knew you could be. And that person is capable of anything.
Lead image courtesy of Instagram/@joja. Edited by Lauren Sanchez.