I spoke to a networking group last week. I asked them if November 1st would be too early to start their New Year’s Resolutions. Why? It takes 21-30 days to develop a new habit for most people. New Year’s Day is a traditional day of making changing in our lives. Yet, few succeed.
We learn from our failures. If we started two months before the traditional date of January 1st, we could fail two or three times and still be able to start our New Year with a meaningful resolution that it likely to succeed.
Let’s say we want to lose weight. This is a common one for many of us. We’ve tried all year to lose weight and end up the same or more substantial than we were the previous January 1st. Something happened that we could not control.
If we start our resolution to change a habit in our life on the first day of the new year, we know, from past experiences, that it will most likely not happen. We will fail again.
Yet, if we knew, in advance, that we could fail at least twice before we started, why not use that experience to our advantage. It’s a training cycle before we play for keeps, so to speak. If we succeed, we are way ahead of the curve. If we fail, we have learned some valuable lessons that didn’t count against us.
Sometimes we must step back and think about what we are asking our subconscious mind to do for us. Our conscious mind doesn’t count when making decisions. Instead of telling ourselves that we want/must lose weight, maybe we approach it with a slightly different twist.
Maybe we will be satisfied being healthier than being overweight. We know that eating certain foods results in better overall health. We change our New Year’s Resolution to eating healthier rather than losing weight.
There are a lot of healthy overweight people in the world. If we lose weight and become at higher risk for disease, what have we gained?