The season of New Year’s Resolutions is already here. Out with the old, in with the new. Except, is the new year really a new beginning? Isn’t it more a continuation of one year to the next? How do you make achievable goals you can follow through the new year?
If you’re anything like me, your cycle of broken resolutions can attest to the fact that one year often just slides into the next. Worse, most new year’s resolutions surround exercise, diet, and weight-related goals. Failure to achieve your wellness goals affects more than just the physical, it affects you emotionally, too.
That’s why I’m going to share how to create meaningful wellness goals for the new year. 2022 is going to be your year. Instead of tricks and half-baked resolutions, you will establish a health vision and the strategy to achieve it. I know you can do it. You’ll set up a life code that is congruent with your goals and beliefs – and it all starts with setting meaningful wellness goals! Keep reading to learn how!
Create a Health Vision
The first step to setting meaningful wellness goals is to create a health vision. Set an image in your head of the healthiest version of you. What do you look like? How do you feel? How are your relationships and commitments? That vision is what you are working toward.
Then, consider how you conduct your life in relation to your health. What you do every day matters.
A personal health vision address all aspects of wellness from disease prevention to fitness and even reproductive health. It embraces the daily details of how you live your life. Think about things like your diet, nutritional supplements you take, how much time you spend exercising, how you sleep, and how you manage stress and relationships. Add to the list spiritual practices and how you want to age.
A healthy lifestyle includes more than diet and exercise, it’s holistic. That means it involves your mind, body, and spirit. Once you have your health vision, you’re ready to start creating meaningful goals.
Create meaningful and achievable wellness goals for the new year. Instead of tricks and half-baked resolutions, establish a health vision and the strategy to achieve it.
Utilize SMART Goal Setting Strategies
The SMART goal setting strategy was developed in 1981 and will help you manage your goals and objectives. Here’s what SMART stands for:
- Specific – figure out exactly what you want to change.
- Measurable – define what success looks like and what you will use to monitor progress.
- Achievable – specify how you will actually do your goal.
- Realistic – determine what results you can realistically expect.
- Time – set a specific time for when the results of your goal should be achieved.
For example, if your goal is to exercise more, get specific. Determine what you want to exercise (cardio, strength training, yoga, etc.), how you will measure it, and what success looks like. Make sure it’s within the realm of reality for your fitness level and set a time limit to achieve it.
Stay Motivated to Achieve Your Wellness Goals
Setting meaningful wellness goals is one thing, staying motivated to achieve those goals is another matter entirely.
The thing is, motivation comes from within. If you set goals that aren’t meaningful to you internally you’ll fail every time. Trying to please others, especially with your wellness goals, is a recipe for disaster. It’s too easy to quit when the going gets hard unless you are personally invested in the goal.
Motivation also comes from inspiration. You can be inspired by others through things like motivational speeches, books, and workshops. Motivation is being able to pursue change in the face of obstacles, boredom, fatigue, stress, and distractions.
The best ways to stay motivated? Choose meaningful goals that you sincerely care about achieving. Then, make sure the steps to achieve them are small and easy to incorporate into your daily life. Change requires repeated behavioral rewiring.
A healthy lifestyle includes more than diet and exercise, it’s holistic. That means it involves your mind, body, and spirit.
Balanced Health Goals
Health is a system of checks and balances. For example, strictly restricting what you can eat is neither sustainable nor life-giving. Over-exercising is as bad for your health as a complete lack of exercise. Both movement and diet are pillars of wellness, and they both require balance.
When you create your meaningful wellness goals for 2022, remember balance. Remember, too, that movement and diet are only two aspects of wellness. Emotional and mental health are as important to your overall health.
Tips For Creating Meaningful Wellness Goals
Wellness is more than the absence of illness. It’s the active pursuit of complete physical, mental, spiritual, and social health. Here are several tips for creating meaningful wellness goals.
- Make a list of your goals.
- Create positive goals that add to your life rather than take away.
- Set milestones and markers for monitoring progress.
- Establish small daily habits that you can easily incorporate into your life.
- Get positive input. Share your goals with a friend or spouse. Listen to inspirational speakers.
- Manage stress – don’t let your goals stress you out. (Read this blog post on stress management!)
- Find your minimum effort.
RELATED: LEARN HOW TO REDUCE STRESS AND BRING JOY BACK INTO YOUR LIFE
Set Your Minimum Effort
Creating and maintaining wellness takes a lot of work. Like I said before, change requires daily behavioral rewiring. Consistency is key. Setting hard goals will force you to grow, but within those goals, it’s important to set your minimum effort.
Your minimum effort is the least amount of work you could do in a day that would still contribute to achieving your goal. For example, if you can’t spend an hour at the gym, spend 15 minutes doing an at-home workout and stretching routine. Your minimum effort will let you take cheat days without feeling like you are falling behind. It will also keep you on track for those seasons when life gets busier.
Work With a Holistic Health Coach
Setting goals and pursuing wellness is overwhelming, especially when you don’t know where to start. That’s where I come in. I love helping my clients joyfully pursue their vision of optimal health.
If you’re interested in learning more or working with a Certified Holistic Health Coach reach out to me via my contact page!
Mandy Patterson
