What is the difference between a New Year’s Resolution and a Goal?
New Year’s Resolutions are an overall theme or an implied direction that you wish to take in your life. Goals are the activities that, when broken down into specific steps, are something you work to obtain.
Most people begin the New Year with a few resolutions in mind. They start out gung ho, only to quickly lose momentum shortly thereafter. According to U.S. World News & World Report, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be about 80 percent and most people lose their resolve by mid-February.
If you’ve made resolutions, how are they going for you? Are you still on the right path? If so, I commend you for it! You’re awesome, keep it up!
If not, a change of mindset may be in order. Perhaps, rather than making resolutions, you should set goals. And not just any goals – SMART goals.
Have you heard of SMART goals? SMART is an acronym for…
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T – Timely
Where goals are concerned, this model is the best for moving my clients to where they want to go.
When I first worked with my client Deb, her goal was to lose 60 pounds. This was a goal, but it was not a SMART goal. How was she going to get there?
I offered her several different SMART goal options of what she could do, based on her overall goal to lose 60 pounds. She decided on doing a 5 Week Candida Program. One of the other options, a 12 Week Candida Program, sounded too long to start with. Deb needed a realistic goal for her. She knew she could do anything for 5 weeks, so the 5 Week Program it was! Deb lost 18 pounds.
From then on, all of her goals were chunked down into 5 Week, 3 Week and 10 Day segments. She reached her overarching goal of losing the 60 pounds in 10 months. You can see Deb’s story here.
As an Integrative Health Coach, I help people get into the right mindset first and then together we craft a plan of action steps. By saying yes to working with me, I will help you craft your smart goals. We will take your bigger, overarching goals and break them down into more manageable chunks. You will move into an overall lifestyle change. It will be a simple, long lasting model that works for you and will create the change in your life you desire, not just during the new year, but all year long.
Whether it be a sports coach, a voice coach, a personal trainer, a therapist, or a tutor, we can all benefit from someone keeping us accountable and push us through the times we feel like giving up. Finding the right person to help you create what you want in your life is like having your own personal cheerleader!
When my boys were applying to colleges, they spent many hours and months in a tutoring program to help them get a good score on their SAT’s. Once they got their scores and wanted to apply to college, they worked with a college professional to help them with their essays and applications. Even before taking the test, he counseled them on which schools would be safety schools and which ones they could easily get into with their high school grades and which schools were a reach. This motivated them, and throughout all their hard work, they both got into excellent schools. My point here is that change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, commitment and dedication to your goals to get there, and it helps not to have to do it alone.
Whether you choose to work with me or not, find someone to be accountable to. Having accountability and support is a key element to reaching the goals that you set for yourself.
In Vibrant Health,
