Monday, October 5, 2015         


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Realism helps with resolutions

By Reggie Palma


You made it! Christmas has passed, and the new year is almost upon us.

Now is the time to congratulate yourself for another year lived and all the lessons learned to move you forward into the next year. Congratulate yourself for sticking with your healthy-living plan through the year. Congratulate yourself for jumping back on every time you fell off.

If you are reading this column, then it is time to celebrate and start the new year off with the positive. Take time to reflect upon the year and sort out your various goals and decide whether you met them. After all, you did write them down, correct? Make every effort not to judge yourself too harshly. For example, if your goal was a weight loss of 30 pounds but you managed only 10, then you still met your goal for weight loss. The remaining 20 will be for 2011 with a much wiser you to tackle the problem.

Evaluate the goals you have set for 2010 and decide whether they were congruent with the time and effort you put into them. In other words, look at all the goals that were not met and decide why they were not met. Was it a question of time, money or knowledge? It could well be a combination of all three.

When deciding your goals for 2011, try using this approach:

Reflect upon the bars and goals you set for 2010 and rate the importance of each one. This will help you decide if the unmet goals were simply the result of a lack of priority in your life.

When you come across a goal left unmet but still highly desired, make a plan for success by breaking it down into simpler parts. One of the main factors to success is the time put into the endeavor. Thus, to increase your chances of success, the first step is to carve out the time necessary to accomplish your task. Since time is the only resource we can never replace once gone, prioritize well. You can decide how much time you want to put into it by deciding how badly you want it. The level of desire relates directly to the level of time needed.

Once this is decided, the next step is to be specific. Saying you want to get stronger is not enough. You have to decide what is "stronger." Is stronger more weight lifted at the gym or more pull-ups accomplished? Once these first steps are established, 2011 goals are just waiting to be checked off your list of successes.

Reggie Palma is an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. See his website at fitnessatyourdoorhawaii.com.

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