BE MORE REALISTIC WITH YOUR 2020 GOALS

2020 is a brand new year and brings a new decade for us to be able to grow as individuals, and one way many people try to improve themselves is a tradition many practice around this time: New Year’s resolutions.

While it’s a great idea to set goals for yourself to accomplish, most resolutions are often more harmful than you might expect from such things as empty promises to yourself. Common resolutions you’ll hear are among the lines of “I’m going to eat better,” “I’m gonna start going to the gym,” or even, “I’m gonna go on a diet to lose weight.”

Most of these are not specific in meaning or are just too vague to do anything; most people might do these for a week or a month, at best, before dropping the matter entirely. This often leads to depression or lack of self-worth when they look back and see they haven’t accomplished the goals they set.

This is harmful to a person’s mental health overall, but there is a way to avoid this negative part of setting goals for yourself. One of the biggest things you can do to prevent this is to set more achievable goals. Your resolutions don’t have to be some great big change; you can set small goals, such as reading a new book or trying a new food you’ve never tried before.

Some popular mundane resolutions include keeping your living space more tidy, or to learn how to cook something new and tasty. However, if you were wanting to do something as big as losing weight, then you need to change how you write your resolutions a little bit.

I mentioned that the losing weight/physical activity resolutions were too vague, so to fix it you need to be extra specific. Instead of saying “I’m gonna work out more,” you should be saying something along the lines of “I’m gonna start jogging every morning at 7 a.m.,” or even “I’m gonna go to the gym four days a week before work.” These give specifics to what you’re trying to achieve overall, instead of saying something without knowing what it truly means. These changes are called life changes because they’re supposed to be sustainable for life instead of trying for just a month, then giving it up.

It’s also good to know that to lose weight you have to change your diet, besides just exercising more. If you want make resolutions about your diet, then set an amount of times that you are allowed to eat fast food or eating junk, in general.

With these resolutions you must not be hard on yourself if you miss a day here or there, for example, if you miss a day at the gym or go over your preset number of times you can eat out because you wanted to go out with your friends. You’re not going to be perfect for a whole year, so it’s okay to mess up.

Stick with goals you set and make sure to be specific about what you want to do this year. Try to have fun while doing it, too. Don’t treat it like a job!

Advocate Staff