The new year is here, you’re looking for how to reach your goals, and you’ve got a fresh new set of goals to tackle! I don’t know how many times I succeeded at reaching my new year goals growing up but I can definitely tell you that I failed more than I succeeded.
My joints might get a little bit more sore now that I’m older but with age comes experience and experience helps you find success a bit more efficiently. With that said, here are some tips that I would give my younger self on how to reach your goals and stay on track!
First and foremost, whenever you dive into anything health related both my personal belief and experience has shown that a large failure point to success is drastic change. You need to work to create the right mindset and make this a lifestyle rather than a short-term commitment.
Nothing is perfect and I’m sure you’ve heard this before but perfection is the the enemy of progress. You can only beat yourself up so much before you break, you have to find middle ground and that middle ground will almost always remain a straight road. You might have some unpaved areas, potholes, snow storms to shovel out of, and so on but it’ll always be straight.
5 Tips On How To Reach Your Goals
Embrace change and mistakes.
If you know you can change or mess up but get right back on the road then how can you ever fail at reaching your goals? They might take longer to reach but that’s life.
Ever start a house project? Work on your car? Plant a garden? How many of them go smoothly, especially if you’re not a professional? You finish the project eventually and you have that much more knowledge/experience for the next project.
This same process should be applied towards your mindset for health and fitness. Eventually you’ll uncover something you need to address like some knee issues as you get older (don’t ask me how I know this!), your gym closing which happened for a lot of us this year, unexpectedly getting sick, the list goes on. If you can embrace these hurdles, overcome them, and adapt…you’ll be bulletproof.
Be selfish sometimes.
You’re not weird for sticking to a diet, tracking your calories, or removing certain things from your diet and there’s nothing wrong with you for wanting to get your workout in.
Put yourself first and you might actually find that you start to treat everyone around you better as you feel better.
Find alternatives.
This may not have been possible a decade ago but nowadays between recipes and retail, you can satisfy nearly every craving you might have without the guilt.
This brings us to the sponsor of this article, Magic Spoon, and one of my biggest cravings…CEREAL! Magic Spoon has made it possible to devour an entire bowl for just a few hundred calories while remaining delicious and filling, even with a massive appetite like mine.
All of the flavors I’ve had, Fruity, Frosted, Cocoa, and Blueberry have been equally awesome. Another thing I like to do with this cereal is to throw a handful into some Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, it makes it that much better while improving the macros. If you want to check them out you can do so here:
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Push your mental state. No, I don’t mean wake up and go full David Goggin’s with a 100 mile run…I just mean to slowly push yourself to do things you didn’t think you could do. Throw an extra rep in, walk another mile, hit a workout when you’ve lost all motivation.
If you can learn to push yourself past your comfort zone you might find that you’re much stronger mentally than you once thought which will carry over to all parts of your life! I know some of my best workouts have been when I’ve had no motivation prior to working out.
Being mentally strong is just as awesome as being physically strong.
Stop looking for answers.
The formula for a healthy lifestyle and how to reach your goals is really quite simple:
- Eat within your means.
- Have balance!
- Keep your cardiovascular system healthy.
- Keep your muscles strong!
- Don’t abuse your joints.
- Listen to your body!
- Get enough rest.
Ever hear the saying, if you stop using it then you lose it? It’s definitely true. There’s no perfect diet and there’s definitely no perfect workout. The only perfect formula is the one you can maintain most of the time.
For a long time I tried to make everything perfect and would overthink everything. The second I missed a beat or messed up a bit on my diet, it would throw me down a spiral of failure. When I really caught my stride is when I taught myself that I’m gonna mess up…with everything and that’s just part of the process of reaching your goals.
No matter what happens, as long as you’re pushing forward, you’re still better than you were the day before.
Let me know if you all have any tips on how to you reach your goals in the comments below!
Ready for another article? Should You Count Your Calories & Macros!?
