Before we begin, I haven’t turned my life around an entire 360 degrees, but I’ve made small changes that have had a big impact recently.
Like many, I fell into the lockdown slump. I was going from bed to my desk, from my desk to my sofa and from sofa to bed, and repeating, 5 days a week.
I had little motivation, was feeling pretty crap about my body and feeling very lethargic and couldn’t find the energy to do any writing or just about anything other than reading and watching TV.
What was the point? We were in Tier 3 in Liverpool, then full lockdown-mode, so there was no reason to leave the house other than to get groceries and not much else exciting going on, so I didn’t have any inspiration or motivation to write or look at social media.
So I gave myself a well-needed kick up the ass and started to introduce new habits, give myself new goals and yep, turn my life around.
NO MORE WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME
I love January 1st. It’s the start of a brand new year, I’ve got my five pages of new goals that I want to accomplish by December 31st of that new year and I’m full of motivation.
So while I was stuck in my little rut, I was thinking, Oh well, I’ll just wait until January 1st to start any new goals and to get motivated.
If I had stuck in that mind-frame, by the time January 1st rolled around, I would have rolled around with it and been in an even worse position with more pounds to shift, more work to do and larger goals to aim for.
So I thought, Why shouldn’t I just start tomorrow? There’s no time like the present after all and the longer you put something off, the harder it is to get to it.
NEW GOALS IN DECEMBER?
I started by thinking how I would like to finish the year. What goals could I set myself that would make me feel good and accomplished?
I thought about my blog, the number of books I was reading, my social media accounts and my health and fitness.
I could aim to write two or three blog posts per week, aim to finish the year with 75 books read, start walking more, introduce some exercise, drink more water, and look at ways to grow and improve my social media channels.
But it’s all and good writing goals down like the above, ‘Read 75 books by the end of December,’ or ‘Walk 10,000 steps every day,’ but I needed an action plan. I needed a way to track my habits.
THE SECRET INGREDIENT
My bullet journal has been the game changer for my goals since I started using it in November. I was drafting different pages, looking up different designs but not taking it all too seriously.
Then I started preparing my pages for December and told myself that I would take it seriously on December 1st.
I made myself a habit tracker for every day of the month and I wrote down the things I wanted to tick off for the entire month like:
- Wake up at 7.30am
- Read
- 10,000 steps
- 1L of water
I have little boxes to fill in every day and somehow, it keeps me accountable and wanting to tick these things off every day of December. I’ve even introduced a health/fitness habit tracker to improve that side of my life.
I have a list for the month of books I’ve read and blog posts I’ve written which I look at every day to see where I’m at.
HOLDING MYSELF ACCOUNTABLE
People go to the likes of Slimming World and WeightWatchers so that there is someone holding them accountable at their weekly weigh-in. Throughout the week, these people are thinking about the person they are going to see at the end of the week and step onto the scales in front of, meaning they don’t eat that chocolate bar or they don’t order that pizza.
I’m not a fan of programs like these, but that’s for another day. Anyway, in their mind there is someone saying ‘Bernie won’t be happy if I eat this,’ or ‘this won’t help me lose 2lbs this week’.
But instead of paying £10 every week for the pleasure of this voice in your head, you can make it your own voice for free and be your own accountability partner.
By having your habit tracker that you mark in every single day, you are accounting for yourself and you can see when you’ve fallen off the wagon say of not drinking 1L of water or getting 10,000 steps in.
You’re trying to achieve your goals for you, not for Bernie down at the Community Centre.
Your goals are personal and you need to will your mindset to be stronger in order to stick to those goals and see them through. Be accountable, show up every day and tick off your habits and meet your goals.
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