Grow Your Energy to Achieve in the New Year
“I do really good…. until I don’t,” my good friend told me on New Year’s Day. Research shows that she’s not alone, 88% of New Year’s Resolvers fail. How can we avoid that mid-February crash? It’s not just about setting the right exercise, health, or career related goals, there are strategies for growing our energy that can help maintain a desired trajectory…
After you set goals for the new year. Stay energized with the following strategies:
Remember what matters most.
Typically, our values are the roots that underpin the goals that we set. However, when we set out to achieve our goals, we rarely look back and name those values out loud. Reflecting and thoughtfully naming our life values gives us a strong sense of purpose that fuels the energy needed to realize our goals.
For example, a mother that values both health and spending quality time with her children may have a goal to exercise regularly. She recognizes that regular exercise will help keep her healthy and it will maintain her fitness to ride bikes and play catch with her children.
While her goal sounds great in theory, this same mother is juggling the responsibilities of life, like every other parent. Let’s be real that exercise takes time, sacrifice, and at times can be uncomfortable. So, if we lack a strong sense of what really matters to us most, we can’t hold our ground when we are challenged by life’s inevitable storms. But when we have purpose in our actions, it grows our energy to persist through the storms.
Thus, deeply held values fuel the energy on which purpose is built.
When your alarm clock goes off at 5:30am to exercise before work and you ask yourself, why am I doing this? Draw on the energy of the values that matters to you most.
Fill up with people fuel.
Surround yourself with people who share your goals. If you have a goal to exercise regularly, but everyone around you spends their leisure time on social media and Netflix, it will take more of your energy to resist that norm.
For example, when I exercise, I like to work hard, sweat, and sometimes be sore. In the past, I’ve felt like a weirdo doing sprints down my street in the neighborhood or burpees in my front yard. My neighbors look at me strange.
About a year ago, I started going to an exercise class where it’s normal to exercise VERY hard. The first day I walked into this gym, I thought, finally… I’ve found my people! If you surround yourself with people who live in line with your goals, the momentum of that social norm will energize you.
Reduce distractions.
Picture that the gas meter in your car has a quarter tank. If you need a quarter tank to get to work, but on the way you take multiple detours, you’ll run out of gas and arrive late.
In the same way, human energy is limited. Allowing distractions to drain our energy steals from action steps toward our goals.
Small steps to reduce distractions that make a big difference include things like putting your phone on silent, turning off the TV, and throwing away clutter.
Put first things first by taking steps toward your goal every single day. Energy spent on anything less than your goals are procrastination of what’s important.
Energize with a real reward verses a bottomless vice.
Remember that the promise of reward doesn’t always deliver. When we’re feeling tempted to skip our goal to exercise because we feel stressed, tired, or down, sometimes we think what will make us happy is to eat, drink, shop, watch TV, binge on social media, or play video games. These most commonly used vices are also rated as highly ineffective. Ironically, what will help reduce stress, boost our mood, and bring energy, is to act on our very goal to exercise.
It is impossible to control what comes into our minds. Yet, we are not victims to those feelings or thoughts. What we can control is what we act on.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
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References:
McGonigal, K. (2012). The Willpower Instinct. The Penguine Group, New York: New York.
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