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Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday! tl;dr Learning how to restart is more valuable than any quick tip or party trick to hacking willpower and being perfect. Whether you’ve already fallen off the horse from your New Year’s resolution or were waiting until today to kick it off, learning how to restart after you inevitably falter will help you make it to the end of the year as the new you! The results were abysmal when I looked up any new stats about how many people will achieve their resolutions. Estimates range from 6-9%. A large portion of the population will quit by the end of this week, and another significant number will return to their old ways before the end of the month. Realistically, I bet the number is even smaller for those who achieved their resolutions with 100% accuracy. Most people will not go 365/365 days (unless maybe the goal was to quit smoking or a job or something in that vein in which case the nature of the goal is to stop completely). Even in that 6-9% who will stick to their New Year’s resolutions, I bet most of them will fail some days in the year ahead. So then what distinguishes their failures from the rest? How do you make it into that elite 6-9% of people who will accomplish their goals this year? The key to success is learning how to start again. Over, and over, and over again. We’ve talked ad nauseum around here about healthy habits and keys to success (don’t fret, I am sure I will have more to say about them in the months to come). But all of that is futile if you don’t know how to get back on the wagon after you’ve fallen off. When I was looking up some stats about the topic, words such as adversity and hardship popped up. There were articles about how to get back on it after adversity strikes or what to do when hardship arises. However, I thought these all sounded quite dramatic because no matter what your resolutions are, it doesn’t take major adversity or hardship to throw you off your course. Life will provide minor inconveniences and numerous silly excuses that will end up with you falling off course. It’s not waiting to see if major tragedy strikes to know if you will accomplish your resolutions. Rather it’s when the inconveniences of everyday life will sabotage the new year, new you. Again. Practice restarting every moment you get. Didn’t do the ten pages of reading you said you were going to do every day? Just pick it up and read one page. Didn’t hit the 10,000 steps you said you were going to do daily? Simply start again tomorrow.
It’s so simple you’re probably fighting the urge to roll your eyes, that’s if you haven’t done so already. But we are all culprits for letting one misstep completely redirect our course. The abrupt halting of the momentum can be motive enough to give up. But in order to successfully change, we need to learn to overcome that. Every single time you have the thought that you’ve already messed up so what’s the sense in continuing, I want you to just give it one more try. Practice starting again every single opportunity you can because building that resilience will help you no matter your goal. The other mindset shift to make is that you don’t have to commit to the goal for the whole year, just commit to it for the day. I know it’s a New Year’s resolution, but just make it a New Day resolution. Committing to the remaining 360 days this year can be daunting. But if you simply commit to one more day it should seem more doable. Just commit to one more day, even when you falter. Because getting yourself to simply start will kickstart your momentum all over again. Lastly, give yourself some grace. While I am constantly going back and forth on the seesaw of people needing more coddling and people needing more tough love, I think that’s the nature of being human. And with all of the ra-ra of New Year’s resolutions, there’s enough of the disciplinary reinforcement all around, so I will remind you to be kind to yourself. If your first week of 2025 didn’t go exactly as planned, don’t let yourself spiral about it for the next 51 weeks. Be kind to yourself, you’ve spent all of these decades establishing these patterns that you’re trying to break, it’s not going to happen overnight. Talk to yourself like you were coaching a friend in developing their new habit, what would you say to them if they messed up one day? Probably not that they’re the worst and they should quit now. Give yourself the same leniency, pick yourself, troubleshoot, and start again. We’re all going to mess up this year. But I hope every person reading TGIM can practice starting over again, and again, and again this year, until by the end of 2025 we are all a part of that 6-9% who will fulfill their resolutions. Here’s to failing. Here’s to starting over again. If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM. This week, my podcast recommendation is from Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, “How to Set Goals and Create Health Habits in 2025.” With that, stay warm out there and remember you are capable of accomplishing great things! Until next time, Shannon |
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TGIM: Start Over (and Over and Over) Again
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