Tips for New Year Success

http://theodysseyonline.com/elmira/why-you-should-make-new-years-resolution/259027

It's 6:00am. Your alarm just went off because you promised yourself you'd start getting up early so you can exercise every morning and still have time to take a shower and make a substantial breakfast to start your day off right... But you stayed up late on New Year's Eve. You're tired. So just this once, because it's a special situation, you'll hit snooze. You decide you earned the lazy morning so you stay in bed til 9:00am. Then you remember you have somewhere to be at 10:00am. You jump out of bed and take a quick shower. While in the shower you tell yourself it wouldn't make sense to do any yoga this morning because you're already showering and you don't have enough time anyway, so just this once you'll save yoga for just before bed time. It then takes you forever to figure out what to wear so by the time you get to the kitchen, you have to grab something quick for breakfast, like a pastry or toast, then you run out the door. You promise yourself tomorrow will be different. 

Sound familiar?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2014/01/new-years-resolutions-as-an-expectation-of-faith/

After years working as a Personal Trainer, Yoga Instructor, and Health Coach, I've noticed how easy it is for us to sabotage our own success. Especially when we face the end of one year and the beginning of the next.  When I was a Personal Trainer, it was always astounding to see how busy the gym became in the first days of January. But sadly, all of us working at the gym knew, with absolute certainty, that everything would go back to normal by March.

New Years Gym Memes

So, as we welcome the new year, I wanted to write this post in the hope that it will help you set yourself up for success. By following a few simple tips, it is much more likely that your personal goals or new year's resolutions, can not just be met, but maintained.

The first step? Know what your personal goals are. Do you want to reach your dream weight? Learn something new? Travel? Buy a car? As I have said in several posts, we have to be honest with ourselves and really understand what we want to achieve.

Being by the water helps me to reflect and ask myself the right questions.

Let's go back to the early morning yoga and substantial breakfast scenario.  What were the goals? 
              Exercise
              Make a substantial breakfast

Can you see how vague these goals are? Like "reach my dream weight" or "learn a new language". How are you going to achieve these goals? 

To make sure you know exactly what you want, and how you're going to accomplish it, make sure that your goal is SMART. 

First, write your goal down. 

We'll use our morning exercise scenario. Follow along with your own goal(s):
1. Specific
   Exercise >  Follow a yoga video.                      
   Make a substantial breakfast > Make a smoothie, or oatmeal, or yogurt with fruit and granola. 

2. Measurable
    Follow a yoga video for an hour every day.
    Make a smoothie every day.

Yoga meme, via pinterest

3. Attainable
    Realistically, things are going to come up sometimes. I can do yoga for at least 10 minutes if I don't have an hour. Maybe at least 3 days a week is more realistic for me.
    Realistically, I may not want a smoothie every day, so as a back-up I have other healthy options at home that I could prepare instead, such as oatmeal.

4. Relevant
    I have decided on yoga because it is something I have benefited from in the past. 
    I have some great smoothie recipes, and I know I feel better when I start the day off with it.

5. Time-bound
    I'm not sure how much I'm going to love yoga, so I'll do this for at least two full weeks and then see if I want to try something else or adjust my schedule.

    I'll try having a smoothie for bfast every day for one week and see if I still like it, and if I notice any benefits.

The best thing we can do to set ourselves up for success is be honest with ourselves. By setting small, realistic, and detailed goals, we can feel confident in our ability to accomplish them. 

http://www.nwei.org/10-tips-help-keep-new-years-resolutions/