The New Year and the New You!
Each New Year comes with a clean slate, a fresh start for all. Many people embrace this with a list of New Year’s resolutions and often times those promises to ourselves fall to the wayside come February or March. I know I have been guilty of this more than once in the past few years. Once we start to slip up with our goals, we often feel defeated and throw in the towel entirely. Well NOT THIS YEAR! Sunset chiropractic believes in you and would like to share a few tips and tricks to help you reach your goals this year.
The best way to maintain your resolutions is to be SMART about it! Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, & Timely
By building goals with a firm SMART foundation you not only feel more confident in yourself but also eliminate a lot of the guesswork, the hesitancy, and the uncertainty of whether or not you can pull it off.
Specific: Leave yourself no grey areas, be definitive and precise. Turn goals like "lose weight" or "workout more" into "I want to lose X lbs/ I want to wear a size Y pair of pants." "I want to run for 30 minutes, 3x/week or I want to go to the gym 3x/week"
Measurable: Be sure you have a way to track your progress. Whether its counting miles ran, pounds lost, books read, or hours of activities be sure you have a way to measure and RECORD your measurements.
Attainable: Be sure you don't bite off more than you can chew. If you have never been a runner don't start your year thinking you will run a marathon. I'm not saying you can’t train for a marathon in a year, because we know you can, but first train for a 5K. Break your goal into bite size pieces and only focus on the first bite. Start training for a 5k then graduate to a 10k, 15k, half marathon, and eventually you will be up to your marathon distance in no time!
Realistic: While similar to attainable there is a distinct difference. When asking if a goal is attainable you look to see if it is plausible, feasible, and actually possible. Realistically though... would you do it? Keeping with the running goal from the previous step, if you hate to run, would you actually follow through on your goal? Make sure your goals are ones you could realistically see yourself making effort to strive towards victory!
Timely: Once again it is about breaking goals into manageable bite sized pieces. Is there a time component to your goal? How long will you work on your goal each day, week, and month? Set up monthly "check in" points where you take a step back and look at your progress so far. Set deadlines for yourself for each of your goal’s stepping stones. If you want to drop 10 lbs this year then aim for the first lb drop by February 1st, If you want to run longer distances aim to have your first 5K by the end of the month.
If your goals match these five criteria then you are on the fast track to success!
The staff at Sunset Chiropractic are more than happy to help you achieve your goals! Whether you want to lose weight, improve body conditioning, improve your nutrition, reduce pain, increase your activity levels, or really any other goal you can think of we are happy to lend our expertise, personal experience, and energy. To help you attain success we offer nutritional consultations, chiropractic manipulation to keep your body in tip top condition, and foot evaluation/screening for functional orthotics to help improve foot, knee, and back health.