New Year, New You! It's easier said than done! The top trending New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight, exercise more, stop smoking, stress less and drink less but often after settling on a resolution, we can feel a little bit overwhelmed about how to actually make it happen and often think about quitting them before February even arrives.
Here Vickey Nolan The Wellness Guru gives her top tips to stick to the resolutions in 2020.
- The sky is your limit, dream big: Identifying what you’d really love to achieve in 2020 is the first step. My sister’s dream for this year is to run the 2020 Dublin Marathon. She has never ran more than 10km so it’s a big goal for her. She entered the new lottery system for-the race and bagged herself a place. Ambitious goals inspire those around you, and through support, builds your belief in you achieving it can spur you on and keep you motivated.
- Break it down into small achievable steps: break that huge goal down into smaller more manageable and achievable steps. Achieving regular smaller targets help build your confidence. Try to enjoy hitting the smaller goals on the long journey to your bigger in goal.
- Hold yourself accountable: one of the best ways to reinforce your goal and help you to achieve it is to talk about it, tell people your plan. I find a very effective way to stick to a goal is to do it more than just for yourself, pick a cause close to your heart and do it for a charity. I myself ran the Cork Marathon and one of the main reasons that I kept going and stayed motivated was that I was running for Temple Street hospital after witnessing the great work they do when a friend’s baby needed an emergency heart operation.
- Don’t change if you’re not ready: the last thing you want do you set yourself up for failure. Do your resolutions mimic last year’s? Write a compelling list on why you want to change and why you haven’t succeeded in the past. If you’re going to stick to your resolution, it needs to mean more to you now than ever before. Find the reason why you need to stick, what it means to you and how you will feel when you achieve it and commit.
- Create a success bank to keep you motivated: Write down all the small successes along the way so that you have that when you feel like quitting. Big dreams don’t just happen they are a sum of lots of little successes along the way.
- Finding the main reason behind why you want to reach your goal and understanding what it means to you will really help you to achieve it: If you have a setback, as we usually do, revisit the the reason why you set yourself the resolution in the first place. Revisit the reasons why it means so much to you and look over your success bank to highlight how far you have come. Resolutions can be really daunting but following these simple tips might help to bring you closer to achieving them.
Vickey Nolan is a Personal Trainer, General Manager, and Fitness Director at West Wood Club, Dun Laoghaire. She has a BSc (Hons) Degree in Health Promotion and Physical Activity and has been working in senior roles in the fitness and wellness industry for over 12 years. Follow Vickey on Instagram and follow West Wood Club on Instagram.
