7 Ways to Reignite Your New Year's Resolutions

Note from Amy: Bonjour! ...that's about all I know how to say in French. :/  I would like to introduce you to a hilariously inspirational woman I have gotten to know over the past month: El Edwards of The Itchy Soul.  She describes her blog as a "spiritual watering hole for heathens & Jesus freaks."  Instant love on my part. ;) Her content is downright fun and whimsical, as well as motivational and encouraging.  So here she is in the form of an uber-helpful guest post!  Please welcome El Edwards!Be honest … you were so full of hope this time weren’t you? All those plans and promises you made to yourself. Aspirations and the dream of a brand new, fresh start this year. This is it, you told yourself, this time I’m finally going to get it done.Except here we are, just a few weeks into that exciting new start and things aren’t quite how you hoped they’d be.Sure, you’ve had some good days, even a few great days. But you’ve also had some days where you just wanted to get back into bed and call time.And you wonder if it’s just you? What’s so wrong with you that you can’t see this thing through? Other people do it. Everyone else is plugging away quite happily at their resolutions so why not you?And then a few weeks later, when you hear the people around you complaining about how horribly they’ve fallen from their New Year’s resolutions, you realize that it’s not just you.The problem is that where those resolutions are concerned, most people are doomed before they start because they set themselves up with goals that are impossible.But you’re not most people.The resolutions you told yourself you were going to achieve are those that you actually want to make happen.So it’s time to kick it up a gear with 7 tricks to help you get back on track, now that the New Year excitement has worn off.Why not try one each day this week and see which suits you best?

Focus on the things you don't want to change

Start from where you are right now. Look at your current life, honestly and without self-recrimination, and start noticing what you are already doing that you’d like to continue. I learned this from Diet Crushing supremo Karen Paritee (who in turn learned it from Qui-Gon and Brian Tracy!) but it doesn’t only apply to your habits around food.Want to up your exercise game but keep remembering those times when you sat in front of the telly instead of doing your burpees? Stop it! Instead, make a note of those times when you walked instead of taking the car, when you skipped through to the kitchen instead of trudged and when you danced about the house with your wee one instead of offering the usual ‘in a minute’ when she asks you to play with her.NLP masters will tell you ‘you get more of what you focus’ on so what do you think happens every time you mentally chastise yourself for that second jam tart? Yep, you feel rotten and decide that you might as well have a third! By focusing on the things you’d like to see yourself continue doing, you’re much more likely to continue doing them (and have a lot more fun to boot. Bargain!)

Dump perfection

How many times have you told yourself that this is it? This is the time you’re going to crack it and you run at your goals with determination and an ‘all or nothing’ attitude?And then you get sent unexpectedly to a lunch-time meeting and are drip-fed espresso and cookies totally against your will. What happens when you get home, tired and hungry? You remember the cookies, think ‘sod it!’ and reach for the take-out menu!Or your dog decides to throw up all over the hallway carpet, just as you’re getting your running shoes on. And by the time you finish cleaning the dog and consoling your partner, it’s starting to get dark. You’d planned on doing your long run that night and that’s going to be impossible now. Off come the shoes and there goes your behind on the sofa!What if instead you set yourself a bare minimum? The things you’d like to do in the very next hour that would be good enough?You might just surprise yourself and at the very worst, if you do find yourself force-fed cookies, you can remind yourself that it’s only an hour and you can start over in just 59 minutes from now.

Play to your strengths

Every time I think about this I’m reminded of my sister and I; we have very different exercise preferences. Before the birth of her third child she would run three times a week on her home treadmill. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Without fail. Music on and she was away.Me? No chance. Sing it with me … “bor-ing!” I’ll do a something for a few weeks and then change to something else. That in turn will keep me entertained, briefly, and then it’s the turn of something else. Last summer it was a bike. Last month it was T-Tapp.It would be very easy to look at both our exercise habits and, depending where on the scale of routine versus variety you personally sit, find fault with either (or both!). Take that thought process further and you’re one short step away from being really horrible to yourself because you don’t do it the way your best friend does.Stop it! Take time to find out who you are, what best suits your personality and start playing to your strengths.

Check your metaphors (and other trickery!)

“I should go exercise.” “I really ought to grab a snack.” “I should call my mum!”How do those ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughtas’ make you feel? Sure, it’s all just semantics and trickery but it’s semantics and trickery that works so why not start using that to your advantage?!Instead of listing the things you should be doing, (usually accompanied by the obligatory long sigh and hanging shoulders) start choosing to do things instead.“I choose to exercise now.” “I am going to grab a snack.” “I want to ‘phone my mum!”And when you’re done with that, it’s time to turn your attention to how you describe your life. Fill in the blanks time: Life’s a …. game? battle? journey? process? struggle? fight?These are your metaphors and they affect how you see and interact with your world. If life’s a game then you’ll seek out ways to make it fun, but if life’s a struggle, even the most potentially uplifting of activities is going to feel like hard work.Want to hear some great news? (I am of course inserting my own ‘oooh yeah’ in there because I can’t hear you!)You get to choose your metaphors.And even if you’ve been playing with some pretty poor ones until now, it’s never too late to choose a new metaphor.

Find the fun

One man’s meat is another man’s poison and all that jazz aside, I’ve yet to meet anyone who says that, given a choice, they really would prefer a boring life. Sure, after a time of intense drama, some people say that they’re looking forward to a normal, boring life for a bit, but ultimately, we want to have fun.But of course fun is a very personal animal so I’m not about to start listing ways you can use fun to make your goals and ambitions a reality.Instead I’d encourage you to know yourself.Know what makes you smile, what lights you up, the stuff that you can easily get lost in for hours at a time, just for the sheer joy of it.What is it about those things that you love so much? Can you bring elements of that feeling to your goals and ambitions? If you love hanging out and chatting with friends then an exercise schedule that sees you spending a lot of time alone will be counter-intuitive. Likewise, if you love the adrenaline of a scary movie, look for ways to get that same buzz from your workouts.

Celebrate the small stuff

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. But even the most dedicated elephantarian* would put down his knife and fork between bites and take time to congratulate himself when he’d managed a toe!And you can do the same.Even if your goal is relatively modest, there will still be small bites you can celebrate.My own metaphor is this: life is as much about the journey as the destination, so celebrate the small wins and take time to enjoy the views at the resting points.In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”* No elephants were injured in the writing of this blog post.

The gift of today

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow’s a mystery. Today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.” (Various but I heard it via Oogway in Kung Fu Panda.)Now while this is a lesson for life in general rather than specifically for your health or fitness goals, there is a way to tweak it to our advantage.You know those days when everything goes exactly the opposite of ‘according to plan’? And that ‘I’ve blown it’ feeling you’re left with? Well what if I told you that you could go to bed at the end of that crappy day and wake up the next day and have it be that wonderful fresh start feeling that you had just a few weeks ago on January 1st?Because you can, and it’s easy.If you start to appreciate every single day as the gift it is, every single day can be a day to re-start your exercise schedule with gusto, to have that fresh fruit smoothie for breakfast that you promised yourself and to park an extra couple of blocks from work and walk the rest of the way.You don’t need a special landmark day to restart or step up. Every single day is wonderful and special in it’s own way. The only perfect time to start anything is right now, today, with that much-lauded single first step.*****So there you have it, seven tricks to help you kick-start those wavering goals and ambitions, but ultimately they all come down to knowing yourself. Try one or two, tinker with them, adjust them to suit your own personality, time and preferences but whatever you do, do something!What have I missed? Do you have any golden nuggets to share that have helped you push past that dreaded ‘end of the month’ slump?Share them in the comments so we can all help each other and let’s look forward to a fabulous Feb!--El Edwards is the real-life coach, confidante and founder of The Itchy Soul Community. If you’re feeling that restless itch in your soul then someone out there is trying to get your attention and El is here to help you be the you you were born to be. If you’d like to get a taste of the daily Soul Itch audio and journal prompts that community members enjoy, click here to sign up for the weekend Soul Itch