Learn how to set yourself up for success to meet your wellness goals for the New Year.
When there is another New Year around the corner, it’s common for people to begin pondering what their goals will be for the upcoming year, including wellness goals. The end of one year and the beginning of the next is an ideal time for reflection on what went well throughout the previous year and what could’ve gone better in our lives. It’s also common for us to consider what we want the upcoming year to look like based on that reflection.
Suppose you’re ready to take the reins to create wellness goals to look and feel your best moving into the New Year. In that case, you might be pondering the best way to make that happen. The good news is that you don’t need to do an entire overhaul or take huge steps – in fact, doing so could make it more difficult to meet your goals, as we go into more detail in the next section.
5 Tips to stick to your health and wellness goals
Health and wellness goals are essential to any lifestyle, regardless of the time of year. They include everything from ways to release stress, new year weight loss, and reducing symptoms of chronic conditions to improving mental health, enhancing personal relationships, and better self-care. Below, we offer five simple tips to help you navigate your goals for health and wellness in the New Year that can lead to sustainable success.
1. Let go of New Year’s resolutions
Wait! What? This is a post about New Year’s wellness goals, yet we suggest you let go of New Year’s resolutions? Why?
It’s not that setting New Year’s resolutions is a bad thing. However, many people set big goals for themselves at the beginning of the year and then beat themselves up when they don’t follow through with them. In fact, research suggests that the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is 80%.
The reality is that the resolutions or goals people set for themselves are too big most of the time. Another issue is that the approach many people use to reaching goals isn’t one that’s sustainable. In addition to setting goals that are unrealistic, many put unreasonable time constraints on their goals and don’t implement ways to successfully achieve and track their results.
Regardless of the time of year, a better and healthier approach to meeting your goals is to focus on starting on small goals that can help you build consistent habits, discussed in the next section. As your habits take form to support your goals, you can then expand upon them to reach your next goal level. Continuing to develop habits slowly can help you meet your goals and sustain the results you desire.
2. Start small
Have you ever heard the saying, “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch; yard by year, it’s hard?”
When we lay out our goals and then develop the smaller ones it takes to reach them, we can develop a roadmap to meet the bigger goals. Taking baby steps also makes life more manageable and sets you up for success vs. trying to bite off more than you can chew and setting yourself up for failure.
3. Be gentle with yourself
Life happens, which can interfere with our plans from day to day, including our plans to reach our goals. If you find that you have to skip a day, cancel an appointment, or slide off a bit along the path to meeting your goals, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, be gentle on yourself, and give yourself grace; remember that tomorrow is a new day, and you can pick up where you left off.
The focus should be to start small and build healthy habits that are sustainable. Getting off track once in a while isn’t going to put you back at square one as long as you’re overall consistent with the steps you take to move forward and achieve the results you want.
4. Give yourself credit for the small wins
We often forget to celebrate the small wins along the path to our bigger wins. That said, giving yourself credit for all you do on any given day is essential. Did you get dinner on the table? The kids off to school? What about that report for work or that five-minute walk on the treadmill? Yes, even the regular tasks that we do on a daily basis are accomplishments, so stop and give yourself credit for those.
In terms of your wellness goals, remember to give yourself credit for each step you reach along the way. If your goal is to run a 5K in 6 months, give yourself credit for things like creating your plan, the first day you walk a mile, and for each day you run a little bit. Those are all wins on your journey!
5. Make self-care a priority
It could be that your wellness goals include reducing stress, and if so, that’s a good thing! Stress impacts our mental and physical health, as well as our relationships. And as stress builds, it makes it more difficult to reach our goals and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Incorporating healthy self-care into your regular routine can go a long way in alleviating stress and helping you stay on track to reach your wellness goals. Self-care looks different for different people. It could be taking time out at least once or twice a week to play a game or sport you enjoy, taking a bath, getting a massage, reading a book, or taking time out to meditate daily. What matters is choosing self-care activities that feel good to you and help you relax and unwind.
Many people turn to Roman’s Wellness for facials, massages, foot baths, acupuncture treatments, and time in our relaxing salt room to help reduce and alleviate stress and incorporate self-care into their lives.
Roman’s Wellness can help you reach your wellness goals!
If you’re seeking a partner to help you reach your wellness goals, we’re here to help. We offer services and treatments to support self-care, stress reduction, relief from chronic pain and chronic conditions, sports injury recovery, weight loss, infertility, and more!
If you’re in Morgantown, WV, or surrounding areas, contact Roman’s Wellness Center to schedule an appointment or consultation to learn more. You can connect with us online or call 304.322.0093!
