Do you (or did you) have New Year’s resolutions? Eat healthier? Exercise more? Lose weight?
Here’s a sobering statistic: about 40% of American adults make New Year’s resolution, but by the second week of February 80% of those people have already given up on their resolutions. Yikes!
Sound familiar?
In addition to not achieving their resolutions, those people are now also saddled with guilt and remorse for their perceived failure. Sadly, this often leads to turning up the frequency and volume on that internal voice saying “I can’t do it.”
What’s keeping you from achieving your resolutions?
More accurately, what’s keeping nearly everyone from achieving their resolutions? Two things:
- the outer world, and
- the inner world.
The “outer world” is the environment you live in.
It’s stressful. There’s not much time. You’re torn in a thousand different directions. Bad food options are tantalizingly cheap and easy to find.
Your friends and works colleagues are still eating donuts for breakfast. At lunch, the french fries and sodas come out. If you change and opt for healthier options (herbal tea, fruits & veggies, etc), it creates a certain degree of social friction.
The “inner world” is your sense of self and the messages you tell yourself about who and what you are.
Freud referred to your inner self as your “ego.” Modern mental health experts identify the “you” part of your brain as the “default mode network” (DMN). Your DMN is like an orchestra conductor, telling the different instruments in your brain when and what to play.
Your DMN tends to want to play the same music, which can either be helpful or harmful to your goals…”I can do it.” “I’m fat.” “I’m not giving up.” “It’s too hard.”
Again, the music that your DMN plays often tends to be what it’s played before, in loop. But there’s good news…
You can learn to change your internal “music” to the song of your choosing. But don’t cheat yourself by thinking it’s going to be easy. If it was easy, then everyone would be doing it!
Work on your outer world
There’s a lot about the “world out there” that you can’t control. However, if en
vironmental triggers are leading you into recurring negative behaviors, try to change your environment.
On your drive home from work, are you regularly grabbing a burger and fries from a certain restaurant? Find a healthy dinner location that’s on the way home, and modify your driving route to go there, while also avoiding driving past the burger joint.
Something else to consider: get a Daily Harvest Farm Box to make it as easy as possible to have healthy organic food in your home for meals or snacks. If you run a company or a corporate wellness program, consider our Breakroom Boxes that keep your breakroom stocked with fresh, healthy local food.
Painfully, modifying your “outer world” might also mean removing certain people from your life that are toxic. If someone you know always drags you down or keeps you from improving, consider whether that relationship is worth sacrificing your own well-being for.
Work on your inner world
This is an absolutely 100% true statement: you CAN do better and achieve your resolutions. This is also an absolutely 100% true statement: you can do worse and NOT achieve your resolutions.
Which statement becomes reality is up to you. You have to feed and nurture the truth you want to bring into existence. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.
Take control over your inner voice and tell yourself you’re worth it, you can do it, and you’re going to do it. Then get it done, day by day, week by week.
Measure, learn, repeat
Remember: by aiming for small, immediate goals, you can more easily and immediately measure your progress. Not hitting your goal one week or one month isn’t “failure,” it’s a valuable learning experience.
Missing a short-term goal allows you to analyze what happened and modify your path forward. You can learn as much or more from missing a short-term goal as you can from achieving it.
Going after your resolutions with this mindset means failure is actually impossible. Measure your progress, learn from setbacks and improvements, modify your approach accordingly, then repeat!
At Daily Harvest Express, our customers and clients are also our neighbors and our friends. We believe in you and want you to achieve your resolutions!
If we can help you achieve your goal of eating better (fresh, local, organic food) or losing weight (better diet), we’d be honored to help and support you.
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