Setting goals and losing steam

It’s now a full week after New Year’s Day.

How are you goals, resolutions or plans coming along?

You might find that after 7 days you’re still enthusiastic and motivated or you might have found that you’ve lost steam.

If you resonate with the latter then it might be useful to ask yourself why?

Why after such a short period of time are you no longer committed or dedicated to the things that you were overflowing with excitement about less than a dozen days ago.

This could be the perfect time to call yourself out and acknowledge that the new year was not enough to change you into a brand new version of you.

There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact I’d say that’s the case for most of us.

Forming new habits or committing to new projects isn’t easy when you’re used to doing things a different way. And so the challenge or the work is to find a way of implementing new habits that works for you.

Procrastination pleasure

There must be some explanation for why we do it.

When you don’t want to do something or you know it won’t be easy, putting it off feels good. There’s pleasure in indulging in the freedom of future deadlines, future work or future responsibilities.

But that doesn’t mean that you can avoid them forever. That pleasurable feeling of freedom and not doing what you “posed to do” can’t last. You see the thing is whether you do it now or later you still have to get it done.

Instead of indulging in procrastination pleasure followed by an intense stressful period, choose to indulge in productivity pleasure and give yourself as much time as you can in order to do things well.

Sure pressure creates diamonds but constantly putting yourself through stress when you don’t need to could result in insomnia, chest pain and diarrhoea.

You might be used to doing things one way but that’s no reason not to try something new.

Unfinished business

What happened to all those plans you made?

Starting is always exciting and finishing is always the aim. But somehow you let stuff get in the way of your plans.

You focused too much on the problems instead of how to make things happens.

You used your free time passively and felt like you needed more hours in the day.

You ran out of steam.

You listened to that person who said it wouldn’t work.

You lost faith in the plan.

You got stick and didn’t push through.

If your plans are often ending up unfinished you might want to figure out why. You might want to slow down and not get carried away with the joy of starting something new.

You might want to learn to stick things out until the end because some things are worth finishing.

If you want something different

We so often go through life wishing and hoping for things but not taking any action.

It could be wanting a new job because you aren’t happy in your current job but all you do is complain about it.

Wanting to meet new people but never going anywhere new.

Wanting to get fit but coming home after work and sitting in bed watching episodes of a show on Netflix back to back.

Wanting to eat better but only buying frozen food and microwave meals.

We have much more control over our lives than our minds will sometimes have us believe.

If you want something different, try something new.

Something new

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Just kidding because that phrase makes me want to roll my eyes.

But in all seriousness it’s easy to fall into doing the things you’ve always done and putting off exploring life outside of that.

So maybe if you don’t feel totally fulfilled with where you’re at, make a plan and do something.

It could be trying a new restaurant, going on a date, visiting a new city, putting yourself forward for training at work or doing something nice for someone you know.

And like that other common phrase goes, ‘it’s the little things that make a big difference.