Switch your goals from things you want to achieve to habits you want to build that will help achieve them.

The New Year is upon us and in most cases this is the time people decide to lose weight. I’m sure you’ve all seen the gym memes…The gym in January full of go getters and then the gym in February, void of life. It became a meme because it’s true. People get gym memberships….buy new workout equipment & clothes maybe a cool water bottle and do a complete overhaul of their refrigerator’s contents. I call it the new year motivational flood….tons of motivation to begin….but then the reality of the time and work it takes sets in and we’re left with empty gyms, & newly purchased ellipticals, spin cycles, and treadmills that become very expensive laundry baskets. Not to mention the discipline, confidence and accomplishments that were never attained because of goals that were never reached. You see….motivation is like a drug….it may give you a really good high….but eventually it subsides. Motivation comes from an emotional part of the brain that needs to be triggered…. i.e the new year. It relies on outside sources to trigger it. And we can’t control our world….we can only respond to it. So the key is to build discipline by setting simple goals in the beginning….discipline is a characteristic. It’s something you all have but most ignore. Discipline is the ultimate key to your success. But it’s like a muscle…the more you use it the stronger it gets. So if you really want to reach the goals you’ve set….start by building discipline….how do you do that? By practicing consistency. It should be every beginners goal….it doesn’t need to be complicated. Simply lay out your goals and at the top is consistency….you cannot reach the others without it. I tell clients that struggle with this to make their goals just past their usual giving up point….if you go hard in January and fall off in February, your consistency goal should be hitting the gym 30 to 60 minutes 3 times a week until March 31st. You don’t just wake up a new version of yourself ON January 1st….you may FEEL you have…but again that’s the emotional high of motivation. Be realistic and focus on habits not just results. Replacing ones that don’t align with your goals….to ones that do. More clean food and cooking, less packaged food and restaurants. More drives to the gym, less drives to the bar. More positive thinking, less negative dwelling. Change your goals and you’ll start to reach them. No more goals about getting skinny and being fit….More goals about getting consistent and being disciplined….you get those 2 down…there’s nothing you can’t achieve.