How to Make This Year Healthy, Strong, and AUMazing!
Have you ever set a goal that seems important yet you struggle to accomplish it? Does it feel like you take two steps forward and then five steps back? If this sounds like you, it is likely you are experiencing tension between conflicting commitments.
Yes, you’d love to begin exercising and the early morning is the only time you have available to do it. However, your favorite television shows air at 10 pm, and you don’t get to sleep until 11. As a result, you are unable to wake to that 5 AM alarm. Or, you’d like to cut back on the number of alcoholic beverages you consume each week to lose weight and increase your energy, but your friends are giving you a hard time about it, and you don’t want to feel “left out.”
These types of conflicting commitments are among the most common challenges my clients face when making a lifestyle change(s). On the one hand, there is a goal that they’d love to achieve. On the other hand, they are struggling to accept the sacrifices that come with the change. Feeling pulled in two different directions leads to more of the status quo! The solution is to stop fighting yourself.
In this post, Coach Chris walks you through a 3-step process for overcoming challenges and successfully achieving your goals!
DISCOVER YOUR WHY
Many people set goals based upon what they think they SHOULD pursue. This may stem from feeling guilt or shame around a specific area of your health and fitness, or it may be due to pressure from friends, family, or co-workers. But the reality is that goals set from this mindset don’t move your soul and lead to sustainable changes over the long-term.
What transforms your life is becoming CLEAR about what’s most important to you and discovering WHY you want to pursue a specific goal. This begins by asking yourself QUESTIONS such as:
What would I love to do or bring into my life this year?
How will making this change benefit me?
What possibilities/opportunities emerge that I don't have right now?
What happens if I don’t do anything (if nothing changes)?
What does that life look like?
Are there painful consequences from not making these changes?
Once you discover the answers to these questions and get clear about your WHY factor, figuring out HOW to make the changes you want becomes a lot easier.
ADD BY SUBTRACTING
If you’re like the people we coach and train at our personal training and wellness center in Boston’s Back Bay, then you lead a busy life that pulls you in many different directions. Adding new habits to your existing schedule can be daunting. That’s why my Boston personal trainer team and I help our clients decide which things in their life they can eliminate before adding in new lifestyle changes.
Identifying and eliminating what we call “energy vampires” can be a game-changer when it comes to successfully building new, health-giving habits.
For example, cutting down on time you spend on social media and allocating specific hours of the day for it can free up a time to workout, meal prep, or meditate. Or reducing TV time by just 30 minutes each night can allow you to get to bed early enough to get up and exercise in the morning.
Small changes like these can lead to significant results, and it starts by SUBTRACTING something to free up energy and time to ADD a healthy, fit new habit.
GET A COACH
We all have dreams -- dreams for love, for a thriving career, for a healthy body, for "fill in the blank." But often our old, limiting beliefs can get in our way of experiencing the health and happiness we desire. We all have blind spots - areas in our life that aren't working as well as we’d like -- relationships, work situations, our health, finances, etc. How do you deal with them?
If you’re like most people, you find yourself stuck in the same situations over and over again, a vicious cycle that keeps you feeling frustrated. You can keep struggling on your own OR you can work with a coach who is as committed to your success as you are; who can hold you accountable to your goals; and who can provide you with tools and strategies to reshape the belief systems and habits that are preventing you from being the best version of yourself.
If you’d like the professional guidance and support from one of our expert Boston personal trainers and coaches, we’d love to serve you.
We offer a complimentary 60-minute strategy session to help you begin designing a roadmap to make your health, fitness, weight loss, and life goals a reality.
Click here to get started!