7 Tips To Make Your New Years Resolutions Stick || WBWL Ep 57

This is a great episode I made in 2022 on how to make your New Years Resolutions stick.

Do you struggle with consistency when it comes to your health and fitness? 

Do you go through each year making a 'new' fitness goal but end up falling off the wagon each and every time? 

I used to go through that, too! 

In this episode, I'll discuss 7 tips that have helped me not just make my New Years resolutions stick, but it'll help you to be consistent and achieve any goal you truly desire. 

Each of these tips are super practical, and you can implement all of them into your life immediately, especially before the start of 2024! 

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Won Body Won Life Podcast. Hi, I'm your host. Dr. Jason Won lifestyle physical therapist. I talk about everything health and wellness related So you too can have a more resilient body and a more fulfilling life If you haven't yet, please support this channel by hitting that subscribe or follow button So you never miss out on another podcast episode Also, if you could please leave a review or ranking before leaving this episode That way, more people will be able to benefit from the content of my podcast. Today, I wanted to give you seven tips to make your new year's resolutions stick. Time and time again, I have failed many different goals. There are times where I wanted to hit a certain financial goal. I had a certain relationship goal. I wanted to lose weight. I wanted to lift a certain weight. And every time I had failed myself. It wasn't until I started reading lots of books, listening to different podcasts, and, surely enough, really focusing on self empowerment and bettering myself in every aspect of my life, that is when I truly made the difference. I wanted to share with you seven tips that have really helped me to make New Year's resolution stick. But also, you can come back to this episode and use this for any short term goal or long term goal. And I'm speaking to many people that have the more lofty goals. If you're trying to be a millionaire, if you're trying to lose the 50 that you haven't, if you're trying to get back into a certain sport or relieve a certain pain, and you've been dealing with constant failures in your life, trials and tribulations have moved you in different directions, and you never truly stick to a goal, I promise you these seven tips will be life changing for you. The first goal that I have is breaking larger goals into little tiny action steps. And I want you to close your eyes on this if you can, is to imagine that there are two ladders. And both of these ladders lead to the same goal. Okay, there, there's two ladders that are propped up onto the same building. You're trying to get to the top of the building, and that is where your final destination is. However, the two ladders look vastly different. The first ladder, Ladder A, is a ladder that has these really not a lot of steps. So basically you're trying to grab the next step, but it's almost with it is almost not within reach. It's these large steps that you maybe even have to jump to get to the next pole. And so that way it feels more lofty. It feels more risky. It feels if you don't grab onto that part of the ladder that you're just going to fall all the way back down. And that's usually. Doesn't feel very good. This is oftentimes how many people with their fitness and health goals They don't reach their goals because they feel that it's too lofty. They're not breaking it down into smaller chunks Another way to think of it is you're not breaking it down into shorter term goals so when you try to grab on to something you're thinking about the larger goal of losing 50 pounds, but you're not really even thinking about just Building the basics on how to lose weight, which is being in a caloric deficit or getting to the gym, let's say three times a week and walking daily and getting to sleep on time. There's a lot of these little things that you can do that can feel good. And that's like you essentially if you're on ladder B is You have all these little tiny action steps. So each and every time that you're stepping on the ladder, it's well within reach. You're building better habits. You're focusing on your sleep, your nutrition, your stress management. You're focusing on being in a caloric deficit and I know I'm using a weight loss goal, but this can apply to anything is that ladder a has basically these steps that seem so far. In distance that it feels if you don't grab onto it, you can just fail easily and you lose momentum and that feels very daunting. But if you break it down into little tiny action steps and you're thinking about even though I lose, let's say even just 2 over a month, that doesn't feel very good for some people. They think, Oh, my gosh, how. 48 more pounds to go. So they think about climbing that ladder with lesser steps. But if you break it down into smaller steps you perceive that two pounds is an amazing short term goal that you just hit. You start to keep getting that momentum. And when you get momentum, then it becomes much easier to scale that ladder and get to your final destination. All right. So number two is if you feel stuck, Simply just use what I call the two minute rule. The two minute rule has gotten me out of so many pickles, so many financial relationship and health challenges because what it does is it acts as a momentum starter. When you look at that lofty goal, and let's take that goal of losing 50 pounds again, you're constantly thinking about running this race. And so you're trying to get your You're trying to get your foot on the starting line and you're trying to get to your final destination. But sometimes the steps seem so complex that we don't even start our goal. So when we don't start our goal, then we're just looking at the starting line. And even let's say you Did start your goal. You lose a few pounds, but then all of a sudden Christmas season comes up and then all of a sudden New Year's and then you're eating a ton of food and you start to gain weight and then you start to feel very depressed and anxious about going the opposite direction. It's like you were trying to scale that ladder. Now you're just climbing back down that ladder and it never feels very good. So when you feel stuck or when you feel like you're going the opposite direction, I encourage you to use the two minute rule. The two minute rule basically states that all you do is simply start a timer and start doing something for two minutes straight. So if it is that weight loss goal, simply the two minutes when you set that timer and you start the two minutes, stop what you're doing, stop anything that's distracting you from getting to your goal and start doing something for two minutes. And that could be like if you wanted to walk outside, simply just get on your shoes, go outside. Walk for two minutes. And so when you do this basically acts as the Rejuvenator or the momentum starter again because when let's say after you go through the 120 seconds You have your shoes on you're doing two minutes of walking two minutes What I always tell people is if you're super busy if you're like a really busy parent, you have four kids Feel free to give yourself the permission to go back in the house and do whatever you want. But the thing is that at least you got two minutes in of something. However, for a lot of my clients, a lot of my clients that have lofty health related goals, they want to relieve pain. They want to get where they want to get stronger. They want to get back to a certain sport that they love two minutes. What ends up happening is after the two minutes stops, it doesn't feel very fulfilling at times. So the two minutes of walking and you're like walking. Basically 120 seconds away from your house and you can still see your house. It doesn't feel fulfilling. So the crazy thing about it is that 90 percent of my clients and a lot of people that I've given this two minute rule to that acts as a momentum starter and two minutes ends up being at least. Five to ten minutes and so when you get the momentum going just the two minutes You could have just stayed home and just watched Netflix But instead you decided to use the two minute rule set a damn timer and after the two minutes it feels not fulfilling So once that timer goes off you're going to likely Hit at least 10 minutes of exercise or 20 minutes of doing something, and soon enough, it might just become a full complete workout. Okay, so the two minute rule I constantly use is like when I feel stuck, when I feel stressed out, when I feel like I have no momentum going for me, or when I feel like my I'm going the opposite direction of my goal, I'm scaling down the ladder instead of up it. That's when I use the two minute rule. I commonly, if you go to my phone has a few different timers and one of the timers is just straight up two minutes because I constantly use the two minute rule to get things going. Okay, so that's the two minutes. Number three. is have an all or some mentality. And I know that a lot of my clients have been this way before. And maybe you feel this way too, is that you are an all or nothing type of person when you're gunning for doing a certain workout, it's if I don't have enough time to do that full 60 minute workout, I'm not going to do anything at all. So you end up skipping your workout, and then you skip it over and over again. That's not the right way to think about it, because if you are an all or nothing, it's likely that with the busy schedule that you have, and with the many other to dos and things that you have in your life, it's likely that you will just miss days consistently of exercising and staying healthy. So what I tell my clients is instead of all or nothing, just think all or some, it doesn't sound as good. It's not sexy at all. All or nothing is that common thing that you see on a poster where it's all or nothing, right? Just go all out. Give your 100 percent every single time. busy and you have a lot of other things to do and you have many other life struggles that are pulling you in different directions and you're always juggling balls all the time and it feels very stressful. Even getting something done is better than none. Now I'll give you an example in my life is that when my kid was born, I told everyone that When my son was born, Trey, I had a rejuvenated sense of working out. It's like I wanted to stay healthy for my son. I wanted to live as long as I can. So I started hitting workouts really hard. And I was more consistent than I've ever been. 16 to 90 minute workouts every single day. At some point though, when you're lacking sleep or Trey is going through, the sleep. schedule changes and he's teething and he's not sleeping as well. It's like you get less energy. He becomes more demanding. And sometimes he actually physically takes time away from you. So when that happens, there was one time where I had, I didn't get to get my workout in at the same typical 11 am time. And I know I needed to sneak something in because I've missed my leg workout and that doesn't feel very good. And I miss a day. I know that can create momentum in the wrong direction and I might just miss a number of workouts. So instead of getting my full 60 minute workout that I had planned out, I said, you know what? I'm going to make the best. Out of this situation. So right when I put Trey down for his nap. Or for his sleep. It was around 8pm. I said, you know what? I have a lot of other things to do. I'm just going to do 10 minutes here. And I made the most out of those damn 10 minutes. I basically put on my blood flow restriction bands. I knew a few different scientific principles on how to make a lot of muscle gain in very little time. So I straight up just got the blood flow restriction bands. I got a good amount of weight in my hands. And I just knocked out Bulgarian split squats. I know a lot of people hate Bulgarian split squats, but they hate them because it's so beneficial and they burn so I basically did almost 150 repetitions in less than 10 minutes. And so I'm not saying everybody should do that because sometimes you got to understand where your capacity is and where your limits are. I knew my body was able to take it. I did a huge amount of volume of working out within a 10 minute span. So when I think about that, and when you think about that in your life, If you're struggling financially, if you're struggling in a certain way, if you're struggling with weight loss, if you're struggling to get over the hump in any other aspect of life, really think about the all or some mentality. Getting something done is still inching you in the right direction. You're still in the positive. Okay, the last thing that you want is to skip your skip all your workouts and you start to get decondition your muscles atrophy All the gains that you had You completely lose it within a few weeks that never feels good to climb all the way back down the ladder Instead of the 60 minute workout or the 45 minute workout that you had planned simply get in something Even if it's just 10 push ups, even if it's just one damn squat just get in something That's the all or some mentality right there. All right, so Number four is to express little to no emotion when you fall off the wagon. Now, this is very common when people lose momentum. And let's say you're inconsistent for five days straight, seven days straight. That comes with a lot of guilt and a lot of emotion and a lot of negatives. And it's just man, you start to identify as a person that is inconsistent, that procrastinates. And I know that you, along with many other people I've spoken with, You identify as that person that can't keep yourself accountable and always loses momentum. And what I'll tell you is that if you put less emotion or even no emotion into your goals, a lot of times it just becomes much more objective and much more mathematical. If you had a 50 pound weight loss goal again, and we're going to use that analogy in a 50 pound weight loss goal, you lose 10 pounds, but then you gain, let's say two to three back when you went on vacation. What I tell people, you really have to say this, I think there's a book that I read, which is called So What. Or, it's a book in which, basically the premise of the entire book is just to say, I don't give an F, so what. So what, I say that all the time to myself, so what, if I gain 10 pounds, because I decided to pig out on Christmas vacation. So what if I lose a bit of money, even though I had a financial goal and I'm trying to improve my nest egg. So what you have to tell yourself. So what, because it makes it more objective when you make it more objective than you can think more clearly about your goals. And why you fell off the wagon if you let emotions and anger and depression and you start to identify as a procrastinator and you just get down on yourself that doesn't help the situation at all with your long term goals. Okay, and especially with a lot of my clients who struggle with. Chronic pain. They were in the pain free academy and they're like, you know what Jay? I was really consistent I was feeling good for a month But then I just dropped off because I got stressed out at work and then the babies and the kids are all started throwing a Ruckus in the house and I just lost it and you know what? I didn't work out for seven days and now my pains back What I tell them is that the more emotion that you put into it the more pain ensues right pain starts to come back with a vengeance when you mix Physical tension in your body, or in your neck, or in your back, and you mix it with emotion, that becomes almost like a concoction. It's like mixing light and dark alcohol. If you've ever done that before, you get drunk faster. So don't do that. If you simply just think, okay so what? I don't care if I lost momentum. I don't care if, I just need to really reasonably and rationally Think about why I fell off, and think about a step by step plan on how to get more consistent so that I don't become that person with a ton of inconsistencies and always losing momentum. Everybody, including myself, as much as I think my habits are, I lose momentum all the time, and it's totally fine. As I'm making this podcast, I'm on a vacation break at my in laws. We just went to Disneyland. We did a ton of Christmas festivities. We went to a buffet. You know what? I know I gained some weight. I know that I didn't do as much of the working out that I wanted to. But so what? Because when I come back home, I'm going to easily get back on the wagon as soon as possible with no emotions put into it. Alright? Number five. Number five is a pretty simple one, but It's oftentimes not utilized as much as you think achieve your goals with someone or gain get an accountability partner Okay, if you have a goal that's private and you're like you're trying to self better yourself and you don't want to share it with somebody I totally get it, but I would encourage you to think opposite of that when you have somebody like it's whether it's your spouse or even your kids or a best friend when you're achieving your goal with someone, it makes it more achievable. Half the battle when it comes to a goal is gaining accountability. You can't just be accountable for yourself. You might be so intrinsically motivated to get somewhere. But I, what I would say is that I don't see anybody that had lofty goals that wanted to make an impact on the world or impact on their own life and didn't have either a spouse, a friend, a child, or even a coach that was not there for them. There is no person that I know that didn't have somebody that they hired or somebody that's close to them that didn't help them get to their goals. Okay. Imagine that imagine you'd like trying to truck Mount Everest and trying to do that on your own while somebody, some people do that. And that I think is the rare few. Those are the outliers. I would argue that some people, they want that accountability, whether from an emotional standpoint or just having somebody to text you and say, Hey, how are you doing with your workouts? Or maybe it's just your spouse that just checks in at dinner. So have you been doing your work? Have you been actually achieving your goals? What did you do today? Okay, I constantly even keep my own team that the people that help me achieve what I want to do as far as from an impact standpoint and help people with pain and get getting healthier. I don't do that alone. I have a team that really supports what I want to do. They also I support them and even with our clients as well. Our clients hire us. In order to help them achieve because they might have saved a bunch of social media posts. They might read a ton of blogs and lots of YouTube videos and they might know a decent plan on how to get healthier and how to build better habits and how to get rid of pain. But the reality is that being able to do. All that and actually put that into a cohesive plan, a lot of times you fall off the wagon pretty easily. So hiring somebody, getting somebody close to you, that's going to be your accountability partner that you can either share your progress, share your struggles, ask questions, or even somebody that is simply just. Texting you or seeing you daily, I can't stress enough how important that is when it comes to making your New Year's resolution stick and making any long term goal stick and actually achieving that with certainty, okay? That's number five. Number six, write down your goals. Write it down right now, okay? If you need to pause this podcast right now, please do. Pause it. Right down the goals. I wouldn't write down a million. I would write down the main goals that you want to achieve because when you write it down, there's a couple reasons why this works. One is a visual reminder. So when you write down the goal and you stick it somewhere where it's easily seen on a daily basis, it's going to continue to remind you it's going to affirm what your goals are and why you want to achieve it. And that is going to help you stick to it. So this is why I constantly any goals that I want to achieve. I either put it At my computer station because I'm always there maybe five to six days a week, but I also stick it in my bathroom because that is where I start the day and that's where I end the day. Okay, I stick it on on the wall. And I apologize to my wife because simply enough, I don't think that's going to be something that I change as lack of decor as it is. Okay. So it serves as a visual reminder, writing down your goals. Also, number two, it feels like you're writing a contract to yourself. So what I would stress to you is if you wrote down the goals just now, you can actually just put a simply an underline and saying that. You're going to signature this and actually stick to it. Okay, that is really important writing down your goals Because there are so many things again in life that throw us in different directions Writing it down will serve as a constant daily reminder to achieve it with certainty Think about it this way an analogy that I like to use. It's like a math equation I was actually a math major and you guys knew that but I was a math major going into UC Davis Eventually, I switched out to exercise bio and became a physical therapist. But I was a math major. You know why? Because I loved math. Math gave me certainty. It gave me objective values to achieve. And when it comes to biology and all these other majors, I was like, you know what? There's too much uncertainty. But math, two plus two? It will never equal 5. 2 plus 2 will never equal 10. 2 plus 2 will always equal 4. That's the certainty that I love with math. And let me tell you why this relates to number 6, which is writing down your goals. If your goal is very complex, or it's a goal that you've constantly failed in your own life, or if it's a goal that you feel Man, this is lofty. This seems unattainable. I need to break this down into chunks. Do you think that you're going to break your long term goal down into chunks? Let's say 10 steps and you're going to remember every single step and stick to it. Very unlikely. So let's say I gave you a math problem and it's 2 plus 2 equals 4. Okay, so you don't need a piece of paper to understand what 2 plus 2 is or even 2 times 2. You know that's 4, but That's like saying, that's like a very short term goal. It's if my goal was to walk from my bedroom to my bathroom, that could be a goal, but that's a super easy goal. That's something that you do automatically. Now, if your goal though, is to lose 50 pounds. Or your goal is to make a million dollars and you have no idea how to get there yet. And you're gaining a lot of knowledge from blogs and podcasts and your coach and many other people. Imagine that. Imagine you trying to put all that into your head and trying to stick to it. It's like saying right now, what is 368 times 769? I have no idea what that is off the top of my head. 368 times 769. If you know that off the top of your head, you probably have savants, or you're probably a genius of some sort. For majority of people, 99. 9 percent of people, they gotta write that down, or they gotta use a calculator. You write it down, you have to go through all the steps in order to actually find out what the value is, and some people, after they write it down and they give me the value, they still don't get it right? So think about that way. If you have a long term goal that you've been struggling with, that you've been failing, that you want to achieve with certainty, write the thing down. And once you write it down, what I would do underneath it is subcategorize it. Start to break that down into little tiny action steps. Number one, breaking it down into little tiny action steps and writing it down. So that way, when you achieve step A, that's like you taking that little tiny action step, you hit a short term goal. And then step B, step C, step D, step E. And you keep going forward. That's how you're going to get to your goals of certainty, is writing stuff down, sub tasking, and ensuring that you get there. Alright? Alright, last one. Last but not least, number seven. Number seven might be the most important, and sometimes it's honestly maybe not the most objective. But I'll tell you number seven is to remember your why. Famous person, Simon Sinek, I believe is a Canadian author. TED Talks, really famous guy. Remember your why. He actually has a book on it. Okay, when you know your why. And the easiest way I can say this is that you can know exactly what to do. You can know exactly how to do it. But if you don't know your why, then you really lack purpose. And therefore, you don't have a strong enough reason for why you want to achieve that goal. Simply enough, is that why is the most important. The what, the how, that really doesn't matter as much about the why, because when you have a strong sense of why, I feel that when I have a strong sense of why I want to achieve a certain thing, financially, relationship wise, or health wise, when I have a strong enough why, I will always find a way. And I will always find a way to get there. There may be a ton of obstacles in my way, brick walls that are always hitting me in the face. But I will always find a way I will find a way to break through those bricks I will find a way to get past it and I will make another plan as much as I fail I might fail multiple times. I might trip up. I might my ladder might break. I might fall all the way down Past the building I might have been 80 percent up the building and fall straight down and injure myself, right? Without that ladder. But if I have strong sense of why, I will do the rehab, I will get stronger, I will feel healthier, and I will get there with certainty. That is a why. Okay, and I'll tell you what my why is. When I come to, when it comes to helping people get healthier, build better habits. When it comes to helping people with that have had chronic pain and have tried a lot of things and I'm wanting to show them tools and educate them on how to get rid of pain by themselves so they don't have to spend constant money on pills and injections and massage and all these things that are more so Short term I want to teach people the reason why I want to show them is because I Want to give every person that comes my way a better more fulfilling life That's what the one body pot one life podcast is all about. I want to give people a sense of purpose I want people to be healthier so that they can share that with future generations. And when they're healthier, they're able to see their future grandkids. And when they're healthier, I know that I'm impacting someone's life and I'm allowing them to do things that they want to do and actually to live longer. Versus when they get older, it's that tons of people get subjected to a wheelchair. That is something that happened to my dad. That is something that happened to many of my grandparents. Is that when they got older, they didn't have a sense of how to help themselves. And they didn't have enough of a foundation of what exercises to do to keep their body healthy as they age. Instead, they let age determine what they wanted to do, and they simply just withered away. And That's such a strong why in my life and why I stay so healthy is because I have a son now and I want to be able to exemplify what he should do as he's getting older. And I want to be there for as long as I can for him and for my wife and for the many people that are around me. So that is My why and your why honestly it can change. Sometimes you might have one purpose or let's say you have multiple purposes for your why. But don't be afraid to let that why go when you have a stronger sense of why, okay? If your why changes, it doesn't matter. But as long as you stick to your why and you understand your purpose. You will impact the world in many ways. You will actually hit your New Year's resolutions. You'll be able to stick to the plan. And you, maybe you won't even need New Year's resolutions anymore because you built such good habits and such big lifestyle changes in your life that hell, you don't need New Year's resolutions anymore. That's what I got for you today. Just to recap on the seven tips to make your New Year's resolutions stick. One is to break larger goals into little tiny action steps. Number two, if you feel stuck. Use a two minute rule. Number three, have an all or some mentality. Number four, little to no emotion when you fall off the wagon. Number five, achieve your goals with someone or gain an accountability partner. Number six, write down your goals as a visual. Reminder, and number seven is to simply know your why so that's what I got for you today. If you enjoy this episode, definitely hit that subscribe or follow button. I release new episodes every single morning on Wednesdays. This is my very last episode. Of 2022 and I know we're heading into a new year. We're talking about new year's resolutions So if you can help me with my new year's resolutions I'm trying to get to 10 000 subscribers within the next year, which is 2023 So I'd love if you could do a couple things if you enjoyed this podcast If you've enjoyed the podcast before this and especially if you've enjoyed the content of what I gave you with just The seven steps to make your new year's resolution stick. Please leave a rating or ranking on your podcast and also follow or subscribe to flex. Oh, sorry. Not flex Dr. J, but the one body one live podcast. But if there is any feedback for future content that I'm putting out good or bad, please text me at 415 965 6580. Or email me at jason@flexwithdoctorjay. com I reply to all of my messages and I'll leave you always with these last words of advice We only have one body one life make every action you take be one that makes you a better version of you