Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash
When it comes to 2018, the honeymoon is over — but that doesn’t mean that it’s time to divorce those goals you fell in love with back at the beginning of the year. Whether it’s learning a new language, getting healthier, or writing a novel, here are some ways I’ve found to keep going when others throw in the towel/fall by the wayside/insert your own cliché here.
Decide NOW what you’ll give up — A friend of mine got her Ph.D. studying part-time over ten years — while raising six small children. When I asked her how she persisted, she said that looking at her daily and weekly schedules and consciously choosing what to sacrifice in order to make time for studying made all the difference.
Do not make the fatal mistake of just assuming you’ll fit it all in, or that you’ll just sleep less or be more disciplined and organized. Spell out exactly when and where you’ll substitute working toward your new goal for some previous activity. Write it down. Remind yourself often.
Low and Slow — Break your plans into the tiniest chunks and be okay with incremental progress. Even if you’re only practicing the piano for five minutes a day, it’s much, much better than nothing. A tenth of a pound lost per day adds up faster than you think. Great things come about through the accomplishment of small and simple tasks.
The thing is, you don’t have to practice for only five minutes per day, but if that’s all you can fit in, be okay with that. My sister Angie Goodwin has a rule about running. If she has run for ten minutes and she still doesn’t feel like it, she can go home. She almost always continues once she’s gotten warmed up — but having that escape hatch has gotten her out the door many times when she just wasn’t feeling it at first.
Be accountable — I don’t advise broadcasting your goals to the world; for me, that only adds pressure to perform, which leads to crippling anxiety. But sharing your plan with a trusted friend or mentor and then making a schedule of giving regular updating on your progress (or lack thereof) can make all the difference.
My accountability partner Annette Luthy Lyon and I have been emailing each other nearly daily for over ten years. We send each other our to-do lists for the day and then text each other when we’ve accomplished a task — or have had to drop it for one reason or another. We reply to each other with quick words of encouragement or an emoji or two. It’s amazing to look back over our decade of accountability and see what we’ve accomplished with each other as cheerleader.
But if accountability to someone else sounds intimidating, for now, simply writing down what you’ve done and assessing your challenges can help keep you on track. Make a habit tracker, Bullet Journal-style, or simply make tally marks on a piece of paper you keep stuck on the front of your fridge.
Jump back in — Diet guru Barry Sears is famous for saying, “You’re only one meal away from being back in the Zone.” Don’t throw away your dream because you missed one writing session; don’t assume you can’t stick to anything if you chose to sleep in rather than get to the gym for a couple of days in a row. Review your goal, remind yourself what initially got you excited about it, and jump right back in.
December will arrive whether you’ve stuck to your resolutions or not. Imagine yourself next New Year’s Eve reflecting on the fantastic progress you’ve made, and how motivated you’ll be to dive into a whole new set of goals. As Shia LeBoeuf says, “DO IT!”