At 32, one could say I should be all resolution-ed out. Overall, resolutions come with such a negative connotation. We start the year bright-eyed and hopeful for the future only to be discouraged by real life and the previous obstacles that we did nothing new to absolve in the new year. Still, in a way, I cannot shake the optimism and drive to improve that comes with a new beginning. So, in an effort to ditch the negativity that surrounds resolutions, I will be sharing a series of posts about how we can better our lives without all the pressure. If you aren’t already, be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss any of these posts! They’ll be great. 100% money-back guarantee. (Sorry, had to do that dad joke. It’s literally genetically ingrained in me.)
Today, we’ll start at the top with how to Skip the Resolutions by creating actionable plans that lead you to your desire results.
Establish a Vision
Often we shoot straight to the actions we want to make without fully examining the why behind it. Knowing your why provides you with a reference point when you are not especially enthused in performing the actions you set out for yourself. For the purpose of this post, we are going to use my vision of “love how I look and feel” to walk through this framework.
Break Your Vision Out into Objectives
Loving how you look and feel is very different for every person. First, I broke out what it really meant for me to look and feel good. For looking good, this meant mostly in the areas of weight maintenance and maintaining my smile post-aligners. For feeling good, this went way deeper. This meant my mental health and day to day health, both as a normal human and type 1 diabetic.
Align Your Objectives with Goals
From my objectives, I was able to list out my goals under each.
Looking Good
- Create a lifestyle that supports mostly clean eating.
- When I fall off, have a plan to gradually return to the routine that makes me feel best.
- Continue routinely wearing my retainers.
Feeling Good
- Continuously seek areas for improvement in diabetes management
- Prioritize mental health with regular activities that inspire retrospection
- Engage in activities that improve my health in ways others may not see
Want to add some razzle-dazzle? Make your goals SMART for better chances in meeting them.
Accomplish Your Goals with Tasks
You’ve probably guessed it by now, but this is the part where we set tasks to help us stay the course on our goals. Again, enjoy my real-life example of a few of my goals.
Create a lifestyle that supports mostly clean eating.
- Create a repository of clean recipes I already enjoy eating regularly
- Plan my meals out on a weekly basis
- Brainstorm “emergency” clean meals for when I didn’t meal plan like I should. (We call this Ade-proofing. lol)
When I fall off, have a plan to gradually return to the routine that makes me feel best.
- What routine? Begin with ideating on what I want to accomplish within a daily or weekly routine.
- Recruit accountability partners to help keep me honest.
- Write pre-motivation letters (while I’m still hopeful) as a 911 when I need encouragement.
Prioritize mental health with regular activities that inspire retrospection.
- Create a “journal jar” with prompts for self-reflection.
- Schedule time for meditation/journaling on a weekly basis.
- Actually use my Shine app for listening to short bytes geared toward mental wellness.
There we go! As you all see, I am very much a work in progress. Most of the time, I like to set goals with myself with a nice safety net of grace. Tough love never works with me lol. Hopefully, you find this helpful too. In an effort to be extra helpful, I also created a goal tracking worksheet to get you started. Click to download below and don’t forget to check back for our next post in our “Skip” series!
