With a fresh new year, our community centres are expecting an influx of new patrons. Lanes in the pools and stations in the gym are filled with the enthusiasm of New Year’s resolutions – to shed a few winter pounds and get back into shape.
Are you inspired to start 2023 with a resolution?
Or does your personal experience confirm the stats that over 90% of resolutions fail by the end of the month?
As a family physician supporting thousands of patients towards their personal goals, I’ve learned the pitfalls and pearls of supporting positive change.
1.Choose wisely and start with why.
I learned early in practice that patients seldom follow “doctor’s orders.”
They would politely agree to exercise more, consume less saturated fat, quit smoking or reduce their drinking, but three months later, few would have been successful. I soon learned that every patient must choose a goal that really matters to their priorities.
To sustain your motivation in well beyond the first month, your goal has to matter to you personally.
Start with a reflection on the important areas of your life – family and social life, work and play, financial wellbeing and spiritual health, physical and emotional health. You might recognize some areas that have faded into the background over the past year while your attention was focused on the demands in one particular area.
Once you’ve chosen your general goal, ask yourself, “Why?”
Your goal must resonate with your most important values (e.g. family values, community, self-respect, your personal mission).
For example, I want to get into a regular exercise routine because it will improve my mental and physical wellbeing and allow me to be more present in my relationships at home and at work.
2.Fine tune your goal.
Most people choose goals that are too general and too grand.
To get back in shape or eat better are non-specific goals that can be hard to put into practice.
To go from no exercise to running 10 km next month would be too ambitious and easily lead to procrastination, exhaustion, early injury and quitting.
Scale down a mountain of a goal to an achievable mole hill. This will guarantee early success and fuel your confidence to set incremental weekly goals that will steadily bring you closer to your greater goals.
Instead of running 30 minutes every day, you might choose to start with walking 5 minutes and lightly jogging 1 minute every other day for the first week.
3.Write down your goal and share it with others.
Putting on paper the details of your goal will increase your odds of success.
So will sharing it with at least one other person. It makes us responsible to more than ourselves.
Use the SMARTEST goals acronym.
Make your goal Specific (What activity will you start? When? Where?).
Make it Measurable (How far or how long?).
Make it Achievable (Be confident that you can achieve that first mole hill of a goal. It’s just the first step.).
Make it Relevant (Connected to an important area of your life and your values).
What is your Time Frame (When will you start? When will you finish?).
Evaluate after the first week (How did you do? What did you learn?). Make it Enjoyable (Make it fun by doing it with someone you like to be with and linking it to a healthy reward).
Stepping Forward (What will you do next as a progression to your greater goal? What will you do differently?).
Together (Who can work with you as you move forward in your goals? With whom can you share your success?).
4.Turn lofty resolutions into new tiny habits. In his book, Tiny Habits, psychologist, B.J. Fogg describes three simple steps:
#1 Make the behaviour tiny . . . one easy step towards your goal (i.e. doing one push up);
#2 Hook it to an anchor . . . a routine that you already do automatically (i.e. going to the washroom); and
#3 Celebrate immediately (i.e. give yourself a thumbs up, applause, or say to yourself, “Nailed it!”). This may sound silly but it really works by releasing the feel good neurotransmitter, dopamine.
Within 10 days, you will have established a new habit, likely be doing more than a single push up and ready to calibrate to a slightly more ambitious goal.
At 7 pm on Thursday, January 12th, 2023, I’ll be giving a free online talk on Emotional Wellbeing.
I’ll be sharing practical emotional health strategies to manage stress, difficult emotions and negative thoughts and important resources on emotional health and mental illness.
It’s part of the Burnaby Division of Family Practice’s Empowering Patients public health program. For more information: https://divisionsbc.ca/burnaby/for-patients/empowering-patients or contact Leona at lcullen@burnabydivision.ca or call (604) 259-4450.
Positive Potential Medicine 