Two weeks into a new year, have you lost steam already? Do you find yourself lacking the motivation to do what you planned to do to make that steady progress towards a specific goal or set of goals?
Well, you are not alone. The festive season, the mood all around you and the popular culture all serve as sources of pressure to jump on the bandwagon. But do not let that lack of discipline to commit to your plans make you feel like a failure. You are not. And here is why.
Everything we observe and experience is relative; your former self relative to the future self you want to build in any aspect, whether financial, physical, intellectual, or emotional.
Had the past year been so bad that you wanted to walk away from all the stuff and people that made it so? Did you see the new year as a mark off point to start on that journey of making better decisions and choices?
The truth is that change is hard. You cannot just wake up one day and decide to shake off everything no matter how central it was to your life. Sustained change must be gradual.
The beginning of a new year offers an opportunity to join millions of others who have expressed that desire to change. But the truth is, January 1st is a new day, just like any other new day of the week. It is only a new year because it marks a start off point from which counting started in Gregorian terms.
The Chinese culture have a different concept of when the year begins. Across the Muslim world, the counting is different as it follows the lunar phases and hence the first month of any given year is not a January or in winter. In various African cultures the harvest season marks the beginning of a new year. Ethiopia has an entirely different calendar. The point is, humans like to know where they are at any given point relative to some aspect of nature or the other, but no one knows the exact day and time that the earth started orbiting its sun all those billions of years ago when it was formed. That is not to diminish the significance of any calendar, whether Gregorian or Chinese.
The goal here is to let you know that every new day is a gift, a present, an opportunity to do something positive towards a specific goal. So, what if you fell off the wagon and have not been able to keep up with your workout schedule as you planned to at the beginning of the year? Life happens, and remember, your new exercise routine is putting your body through rigors it is not used to, so it will obviously cry out in pain. If that tired achy feeling made you lose the stamina and motivation to get up and workout, that is not a bad thing. Are you going skip a couple of days to let your body recover and get back at it, or are you going to say that’s it, I can’t do this? Now that is where the issue lies, giving up on yourself.
If your plan was to work on a specific goal every day, maybe that was aiming too high, instead make it every other day and gradually build up towards making it a daily routine. It takes a long time to cultivate discipline and expecting yourself to do it overnight is unrealistic, and that is why committing to new year resolutions is impossible for most who set out to do it. If you are on track, tap yourself on the back and keep it up.
Whatever your resolution is, add books to the mix, read more.
Here’s to wishing you a smooth path towards your goals and thank you for following!
Mankajang 