We know instinctively that we should improve our health and of course, the news is filled with messages focused on health. The new first family is putting in a garden. Schools are revamping their lunch programs. Vending machines are disappearing from corporate break rooms. TV news anchor teams are hiring personal trainers and chronicling their fitness gains on the air.
But here’s the issue. Although our level of understanding about the need to get healthy and stay that way has grown, our ability to achieve our own health goals has not kept pace. The statistics tell the story. About 80% of us make New Year’s resolutions while only about 17% of us keep them. The goals we make as swimsuit season approaches meet a similar demise.
But there is no reason to believe that our goals cannot be met. You can beat the statistics and reach your health and fitness objectives if you do the following:
1. Understand your Routine
Our established daily routines are comfortable and familiar. Health-related goals require us to add to or modify our routine in some way. The power represented by your routine is a worthy opponent to your success and to think that you can simply change it in some meaningful way will send you back to the comfort zone of familiarity before you can say “Rumpelstiltskin.” Tough opponents require us to be cunning and smart when we go up against them. Consider your health goals by focusing a critical eye on your current routine and having realistic expectations about modifying that routine.
2. Get them out of your head
All of us have heard this advice before. Making a “mental decision” regarding any health-related goal is like making an appointment that will take place six weeks down the road but forgetting to put it in your planner. For about 83% of us, that appointment will be forgotten, and we’ll receive the dreaded call, “Mr. Jones, we had you scheduled for today at….” The problem with our mental goals is that the reminder phone call never comes.
With technology, writing down your goals isn’t the only way to get them out of your head and into a form you can see. You can add graphics, pictures, color—the number of creative ways you can get your goals down on paper and the items you can add for inspiration are endless. It is also critical to include the reasons you established the goal in the first place. It’s just as important to get those reasons out of your head and into physical form as the goal itself.
3. Treasure them
Unlike the appointment six weeks in the future, your health-related goals do not belong in your planner, on a digital to-do list, or on a Post-It note. They deserve better because they are not just another thing to do. When it comes to goals and health, the element stressed most typically is to “make them a priority.” That approach still assumes they are on the to-do list, but certainly at the top. Instead, get them off the list completely and into a very special place. Consider a family heirloom hatbox or a simple wood box. Like your jewelry and your birth certificate, your goals need a specific place, and you need to know where they reside. In addition, smartphones have hundreds of applications. A Treasure Chest application might work well, but I would also create a physical, touchable place where they reside.
4. Make it Daily
One thing you must add to your routine from the beginning—and it is fairly easy to do—is to review your goals and reasons daily. The only way to make your health goals part of you is through daily reminders. Look at your daily schedule or routine and find the best time to read through and review your goals as well as and the reasons you selected those goals. While the coffee is brewing? During your lunch break? Just before you pick up the kids from school? While you are cooking dinner? Right before to go to sleep? It’s important that your choice of when to conduct this review be successful at least 90% of the time.
Start today. Do these four things and achieve your goal to improve your health. Set another goal and improve your health even further. There is no limit to what you can achieve.
She is the author of the book “One Habit for a Rewarding Life” (May 2009), and a PMP coach. She provides one-on-one coaching as well as e-coaching, teleseminars, and keynote speaking services. In this challenging economy, she has pledged the “2 for 1” year. Every client using her consultation service or keynote address service may choose a non-profit for the same service—free of charge.
Kristie Abruzzo is the owner of the physical and online store, The Back Place. www.thebackplace.com
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