Start Early in Setting Goals for the New Year
By: Yvonne Handy
Tags: New Year Resolution, Holidays, Goals, Productivity, Self

Fitness

Last December, before the onset of 2020, I decided to make a change.

Rather than think of goals to start at the new year, putting pressure on myself to begin right on January 1st, I eased into it starting in December 2019. It ended up taking so much of the pressure off.

In mid-December, I started implementing two things. Firstly, I found a fitness app that I liked, got more dumbbells, resistance bands, newer workout clothing. I eased into a fitness routine. Instead of what I usually do, which is jumping in hardcore and demanding perfection of myself, I just did what felt good. I started out exercising 3 days per week, then ultimately worked my way towards 4 days per week, which was my ultimate goal. I have fibromyalgia and at times that leads to missing workouts.

I had never been able to stick to a workout routine in a long term way. I’d exercise but it wasn’t consistent.

By the time that January rolled around, I had two weeks of exercise under my belt. I felt renewed and accomplished. I didn’t need to be so hardcore when setting my fitness goals. Instead of resolutions, I had simply started building habits before the New Year. Honestly, it felt amazing. Other than when my dad died recently and I took time off, I successfully worked out consistently all year long. After my break, I was able to jump back into my routine. If I had an all or nothing attitude about it, I likely would not have been successful.

I had a lot of success in implementing and carrying out changing two habits. One was developing a morning workout routine and sticking to it. The other was to start writing for myself. I was a freelance writer for years and felt pretty burnt out from it. I started to really resent having to write so much, for other people. After writing for clients, I just didn’t feel like writing for myself. Starting in December of last year, I embarked on successfully implementing both of these habits and it has been a success. I still have those habits one year later.

This doesn’t mean that things have been perfect. I recently suffered the loss of my dad from cancer. Both habits went by the wayside. I wasn’t working out and I wasn’t writing much. I am still in the midst of grieving right now as his death was only about two weeks ago. But, I’m back in the saddle and have resumed those habits. If I had an all or nothing attitude about failure, I may not have been able to get back to it.

Writing

Another goal that I had was to pursue some personal writing projects, rather than writing for freelance clients. I was pretty burned out on that. I hadn’t yet found Medium but I still decided that I wanted to change things up. As with fitness, I decided to jump into it in mid-December, around the same time as I began my fitness journey.

I began by entering a flash fiction writing contest. I had never writing flash fiction before and it was a fun challenge. I also began to look at my options for writing less for money and more for myself, I stumbled across Medium. I’ve been writing here ever since. Sure, there have been times that I’ve written less, and other times I’ve written more. But, the habit has stuck! I enjoy the community, as well as writing about my own interests, or what has helped me along this journey of life. It was also extremely helpful to have started this habit in December. I felt so much less pressure.