Happy New Year! We know for many a new year brings resolutions and goals for personal and professional achievement. That’s why this month our experts are sharing tangible recommendations for sticking to resolutions, as well as guidance on how the six pillars of lifestyle medicine are the ideal tenets to follow when recommitting to health.
Creating Resolutions – Make them S.M.A.R.T.
Making and keeping a New Year’s Resolution is an important endeavor that needs support, guidance, and encouragement. Of the roughly 41% of Americans who make New Year’s Resolutions, only 9% feel they are successful in keeping them by the end of the year. So how can you take tangible steps to making and keeping these goals?
First, focus on crafting resolutions with the S.M.A.R.T. goals tool. S.M.A.R.T. goals are those that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-Bound
In creating resolutions this way, you are better setting yourself up for success to make tangible progress. Our Pivio team recently created a less than 2-minute video walking through the steps to create S.M.A.R.T. goals. See the resource here.
Keeping Resolutions – Take Small Steps
Resolutions are not achieved in one day but rather through small, consistent lifestyle changes. By making small changes habitually for an extended period of time, we can expect to see the results we would like.
When Pivio participants begin the Pivio journey, our team shares the following guidance which is also applicable for following through on resolutions:
- Surround yourself with a supportive community. Sharing your goals with family members, friends, loved ones, and similar groups offers accountability and consistency
- Use a journal to track your progress, identify patterns and reflect on your journey to accomplishing your goals
- Learn as much as you can from trusted resources about how to achieve your goals. Seek out reliable videos, articles, fact sheets, etc.
Transforming Resolutions – Live Your Healthier Lifestyle
As you continue to make progress with your resolutions, remember that you can take these habits and adapt them for a long-term healthier lifestyle. This then transforms the resolutions from goals to more ongoing, consistent habits. This is a core tenet that we focus on in Pivio, supporting our participants to take the goals they set and turn them into a seamless part of their everyday lifestyle.
In a recent interview Dr. Charles Abraham, Behavior Change Scientist, shares helpful insights on transforming resolutions into lifestyle:
“A tool that makes a new behavior easier is practice. Practice may make ‘perfect’, but really practice also makes easy. The reason it does this is because as you create new habits over time, your brain is then triggered to automatically behave in line with your new decisions.”
Setting your resolutions and actively choosing to make them a part of your everyday life will offer the opportunity for consistent practice. As a result, the resolutions should become easier, and will ideally flow into your new lifestyle.
The Pivio team is here to support you right now and throughout the year as you take steps to follow your resolutions. We wish you a year filled with health and progress!