The One Piece Of New Year Resolution Advice You Need To Hear

Reshot/EP photography

Now that the holidays have come and gone, we’ve set our sights on a new project: picking our New Year’s resolutions. We love taking the time to get a little introspective, ask ourselves what could genuinely make our lives better and start chipping away at those improvements. But there’s just one problem with this goal-setting tradition we’ve come to rely on.

According to positive thought leader, personal trainer and #curvyfit Instagram influencer Morit Summers, the majority of people use the beginning of the new year as an excuse to start working on a goal and then totally ditch or forget about it by the middle of February. But the thing is, if you were truly passionate about your goal, you wouldn’t want to wait until January 1 to start tackling it. You wouldn’t need an excuse to motivate yourself. The motivation would be intrinsic in the goal itself.

Summers’ advice? When the moment strikes and you feel inspired to start working on something new, roll with it right then and there. Don’t wait until tomorrow or next week or a national holiday to have a bandwagon to jump on with the rest of your friends. Channel that ambition inside of you and do it 100 percent for you.

Pexels

And once you get started, amplify your ability to succeed by breaking your goal down into a bunch of smaller, specific, more attainable goals, setting personal check-in points and deadlines to hold yourself accountable. Let’s say you want to run a marathon for the first time within the next six months. You need to first assess your current fitness level — maybe you don’t run at all — and create reasonable milestones for you to reach and determine the intervals at which you want to reach them. In the first month, the goal could be running three times a week or comfortably running a 5K by the end of it. And as you go, you check in honestly and consistently with yourself and continue to build from there.

As you stay tuned in to your personal goal and motivation for pushing toward it, don’t be afraid to reach out to your community for support. If you’re trying to go from walking a few miles to running a marathon, you’re going to need your friends to understand and encourage you as you skip those extra happy hours in the middle of the week for training sessions or forego the tequila shots on a Friday night out because you know you have a long run ahead of you come Saturday morning. If you can’t include your surrounding network in what matters most to you right now and have them lift you up (rather than give you the side eye for trying something new), it’s going to be that much more difficult to get where you’re trying to go. The good news, though, is that friends who genuinely appreciate you for you will understand the short-term sacrifices for your long-term gain — and cheer you on along the way.

With these three components in hand — a strong motivation, a specific set of smaller goals and a supportive network — you can accomplish anything you set out to achieve. So as you approach the next 365 days of your life with your current resolution in mind, ask yourself if this goal really means as much to you as it needs to for you to keep your eye on the prize. And if it does, harness that passion, channel that willpower and get after it regardless of what the calendar says or what everyone else around you is doing. Do it for you and do it right now.

Sign up for Daily Fit by Swirled, our newsletter featuring a wellness tip of the day and must-read health news from around the web! You’ll be one step closer to living a healthy, balanced life.

RELATED

9 Books That Will Help You Strengthen Your Willpower

Keeping That New Year Resolution Could Reduce Your Cancer Risk Significantly