New Year, New Mantra
By Jonathan Spears
jonathan@spearsstrong.com
How are those New Year’s Resolutions coming?
“Resolutions don’t work because one qualifier, one big goal, is not going to make you a success or failure in 2017.”
Chances are they are not going great. Nearly 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February.
It’s not that resolutions or the philosophy behind them are inherently bad. The New Year is a time to reflect on ourselves and what we’re doing in our lives. But we feel this obligation to commit to change something and many of us pick similar resolutions: lose weight, wake up earlier, be more organized, etc…But more often than not we fail to meet that expectation we set for ourselves, even if we break it down into specific goals.
For example, say you want to lose weight and you know that drinking a lot of wine at night has kept you from that ultimate goal. So you set the resolution of drinking less and exercising more. Maybe you do well in the beginning of January. But then what?
The New Year comes along and the worst ice and snow storms to hit Portland in decades come crashing in, leaving you stranded with kids home from school. All of a sudden you find yourself drinking more and exercising less.
Already you feel like a failure. You’ve set yourself up with these two specific things that you are going to change. And then variables outside yourself happen, and you feel like you do not have any control. You say to yourself, “what’s the use at this point."
Resolutions don’t work because one qualifier, one big goal, is not going to make you a success or failure in 2017.
When you picture the person you want to be, think about what 'their' daily habits might be. What decisions do they make; actions do they take day in and out that are different than what you do. If we want to achieve the image of who we want to be, then we need to start working on our daily habits and change some things we have been doing our whole life.
That is difficult to do and then to put a qualifier on it and to say, "if you’ve had some wine then you’ve messed up", you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Change takes time. Change takes effort. Change will have pitfalls.
So instead of putting pressure on yourself and deciding one big New Year’s resolution is going to drastically change who you are, let’s face reality and instead commit to improving one small part of yourself each year.
This is why I don’t do resolutions. Instead, I pick one word and I focus on that word as a mantra for positive change throughout the year.
How to find your word
Make it easy. With anything in life if we can’t first do something easy how do we expect to do something difficult?
Pick an active word that creates positivity in your mind. Focus on your internal dialogue and keeping your thoughts on the positive side. Avoid the urge to feel sorry for yourself or complain.
Balance is one of my favorite words. I’ve used it in years past and it means multiple things. Balance work and play. Strength and flexibility. Even balancing on one foot.
When Shelby and I got together she adopted the word of the year and now we focus on a word together every year. This year we decided to carry that philosophy over to Spears Strong and our Spears Strong word for 2017 is Synergistic.
To me, synergistic means people helping people helping people. No individual has the tools or capabilities of taking care of all the problems in this world. We have to do it together.
At Spears Strong we are a staff of three and we are working together as a team to highlight our strengths and make up for each others' weaknesses.
And that spreads to you, our clients. Every decision we make, program we create and workout we design has you in mind. The goal of Spears Strong was to build a community where people can have fun and be encouraged, challenged and inspired to work on their own positive change. We’re here to help you with your weaknesses and make you stronger.