2015: The New Year…review or resolution? Part 2

In my second post about setting goals for 2015 I want to discuss how we ensure that we keep the promises we made with ourselves at the beginning of the year. In the first post about setting goals I looked at how we go about setting objectives and really understand why we want to achieve these things. In this article I want to move away from the process of setting goals and look at what sort of attitude we should have when working towards goals. Even when we set objectives that we stand a reasonable chance of achieving, life has a funny way of throwing obstacles/ events at us when we least expect it. I wanted to explore how we can make sure that we don’t lose faith, in the face of events beyond our control, in striving towards a goal we have set for 2015. I think we can do this by finding inspiration from our fellow man- from fictional to real life heroes- and being kinder to ourselves when in spite of our best efforts things do not go according to plan.

Keeping the faith

I always think the hardest thing to do in life is to try, strive or simply carry on in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds. How many times have you said to yourself or hear someone say to you; ‘I wish I had started that sooner?’ Once you have a goal, the most difficult part can be putting it into action. This can be for a whole variety of reasons. You could be trying intermittent fasting or saying that you will take up running. Both of these activities take will-power and discipline, which when you are not feeling great is sometimes a lot harder to summon. It may seem fine when you are writing your running plan and feeling relaxed, but think about whether you would be willing to run when you have had your boss tell you off at work and then to find that it’s pouring with rain and/or cold. Would you be in the right mind set and be ready to make a new personal best? Only when you are in that moment will you know whether you can do that. 

2015: The New Year…review or resolution? Part 1

I will be posting two blogs on the same idea; on setting new goals for 2015. This is because I didn’t want readers to get overwhelmed by one massive essay and I wanted to create discussion around each part. In this post I will be exploring why we shouldn’t just jump into 2015, but look back on 2014 and realise what was good as well as bad about that year. Understanding what we experienced in 2014 can allow us to build goals for 2015, without setting ourselves up to fail for the rest of the year.

I have taken a long time to write my next blog post; to make sure that I got all my thoughts down about beginning the New Year. I wanted to discuss whether we are all too quick to decide what goals we will set for this year, when really we should be looking back at the previous year and seeing what worked as well as what didn’t. I’m sure you’ve seen it or done it yourself, whereby you promise you will start a new project or hobby and then somehow or other this resolution to yourself falls by the wayside. I am as guilty as anyone else; in my previous post I said that I was going to email a local running club to see about joining them. I can give you any number of excuses, like I was worried about whether they would be friendly or not, but ultimately I didn’t email them. I am not criticising people who set out to do new things or set resolutions. I am posing the question(s) of whether we set ourselves up to fail by not looking back over the previous year’s accomplishment, have we really asked ourselves why we are setting out on a particular activity or course and are we just following the latest trend/ fad in the hope that it will solve issues that are not really related to running (or exercise for that matter)?