You Can - Get Your Goals Past February
Three practical ways to get your goals past the February flop
Congratulations!! You and your goals have officially survived two weeks of 2019! Pat yourself on the back, crack open your favorite variety of Canned Oregon, and do a victory dance in the living room. You earned it.
Now it’s time to face the facts. The truth is, 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. You heard me, February. Why do we start our year with firecracker enthusiasm but burnout after one measly month? What if we made it past February this year?
Here’s the thing. We CAN! (Lame pun intended). And the good news is, you’re halfway there. If you’re reading this and you’ve already fallen off the train week two, it’s time to get up and start again. Here are three practical ways to get your goals past the February flop:
1. Take Control
When the motivation runs dry and you feel the urge to revert back to your 2018 self, remind yourself that YOU are in control.
Stop being a backseat driver to your goals. Get in the driver’s seat and buckle the F up. It’s going to be a real-life arcade racing game full of swerving off course, crashing into obstacles, and flying off cliffs. But at least you’re moving closer to the finish line.
You are in control over your situations, relationships, attitudes, thoughts, and actions. You are not the victim in your life.
People will try to knock you down due to their own failure or insecurity, show them resilience. If you “aren’t feeling it today,” do it anyway. The guilt of not checking it off for the day will feel worse than just doing the dang thing. Will your goals into your reality.
Each day fight the impulse to be lazy and complacent. DO NOT break promises to yourself.
Look yourself straight in the mirror and say, “I’m the captain now.”
2. Recharge
We all know to sense of panic when our phones reach 1%. After lazing on the couch through one too many “are you still watching?” judgements from Netflix, we spring to action in hot pursuit of the last place we plugged in our charger.
If our phones shouldn’t be at 1%, why should we?
You will never be able to achieve your goals if you are constantly on the brink of crashing. Efficiently managing your energy will allow you to channel it toward achieving your goals on a daily basis and increase your overall happiness.
How do we manage our energy? By taking care of our bodies.
Get yourself a water bottle and drink that sucker out of pure boredom. Before you know it, you’ll be going to the bathroom every 30 minutes and feeling more alive and clear-headed than ever.
Stop mindlessly scrolling through the Instagram Explore Page at 2 am and allow yourself to get 7-8 hours of rest.
Get your physical activity in the fun way by hunting for waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge, skiing Mt. Hood, or strolling through Forest Park.
Lastly, give yourself proper fuel. When your body isn’t in survival mode, it’ll allow you to focus your attention and energy on getting one step closer to your dreams.
3. Ditch Perfectionism
Not to be a buzzkill, but the cold, hard truth is that you will fail at some point in life!
Instead of going to the gym 5 days straight, then missing day 6 and never going back until 2020, embrace the imperfection.
It doesn’t matter if you failed today, it matters if you try again tomorrow. Don’t fall prey to the evil whispers of perfectionism that are trying to knock you off course. You will fail, that’s a given, but if you don’t let those small failures stop you, you’ll ultimately achieve what you set out to accomplish.
Join us as we raise our cans to getting past February and being part of the 20% that reaches the finish line.
Cheers to 2019 from your friends at Canned Oregon!
Born and raised in Oregon, Madi Budge is always looking for her next PNW adventure. When she isn’t busy with her studies at Oregon State, she loves hitting the slopes on Mt. Hood, wake boarding on the Willamette, hiking in Central Oregon and running the Forest Park trails.