It’s a New Year and 2020 is special for many reasons: Tokyo is prepping for the Game of the XXX11 Olympiad aka the 2020 Olympics which is 100 years after the first unveiling of the Olympic rings, the next world’s tallest building; the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is due to be completed and it’s the beginning of a new decade.
The New Year has most people thinking about time, reflecting on their life and how they can be the best version of themselves going forward. One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions revolves around fitness, weight loss and health. I don’t disagree that this is a pivotal and exceptional choice when it comes to goals, without our health we wouldn’t be alive. The problem is the pressure can ramp things up to a level which has most people giving up before the end of January. Often the business model of most gyms is to get you signed up and paying in January with the expectation that by February you’ll have stopped going. These contracts can be hard to break, and direct debits keep getting taken while only a small percentage will actually maintain their fitness goals.
I think that one of the most common problems is that people set themselves unattainable goals. Expectations can be completely unrealistic; they want to run before they can walk, and they feel deflated when they couldn’t accomplish even one week of what they set out for themselves. Before I work out, I like to imagine how I will feel after: the satisfaction, the blood rushing through my muscles, the glow and sense of well-being and the improved mood. The latter is what they say people should focus on; long term success. Essentially goals are set to make us feel great, productive and be our best selves.
One goal I have set myself is to start and maintain a blog, I will aim to regularly write personal, interesting and informative thoughts over the course of the next year. I really enjoy writing and wrote a blog for many years when I had a career as an artist: my main subject would be to write about gender identity and how it influenced and drove my work. When I ended my art career, I deleted my accounts and regrettably my blog has been lost to history, now my new driving force is to bring some of these things together with my current career as a PT.
Have you set a new year’s resolution for 2020? What is your action plan?
Realistically we all have to balance a plethora of life’s demands such as work, family, hobbies, training, home upkeep etc and until a new habit becomes second nature it will always feel like hard work. If you can add an enjoyability factor to your goal it will not feel like something you dread, for example: try running to an uplifting/empowering playlist to keep your spirits high and motivation levels soaring. With the start of a new decade the ten-year challenge is dominating social media once again with a new challenge from a twitter user to “show me what you looked like at the beginning of the decade vs the end.” It’s important to reflect back, and it’s what keeps me motivated. In my #10yearchallenge photo
I was in my early twenties, just out of rehab chairing meetings at AA and NA and frankly a bit of a mess. It's a place that I don’t wish to revisit and keeps me working at my goals on a daily basis (there’ll be more about this time in a future post).
I was clearly a long way from where I am now but my motto at Becks A.C.E. Fitness is to remember that when it comes to goals “It’s a marathon not a sprint”, try to keep that in mind for yourself as you start your journey to change.
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