Healthy New Year: Set your course for healthy habit change
As we enter a new year, it feels good to hit the “restart” button. We get to reflect on the prior year and craft new goals, be they professional, personal or health-related.
But goal-setting is tricky. Some people set large and complex goals (lots of pressure!), while others don’t set goals at all. I believe these two extremes provide good insights in how to shape goals somewhere in the middle, goals that are significant and challenging yet realistic and attainable.
Big goal people tend to be highly driven and accomplished. They also tend to breeze over their wins, or move the goalposts on themselves when they succeed faster or more easily than expected. They may feel that the wins they’ve accrued are never not quite enough.
In the context of health, big goal people are often optimizers — they seek perfection in what they eat or how they exercise. They often embrace technology to track health metrics, such as macronutrients, heart rate, sleep quality and the like. These tools offer value in certain contexts — sometimes I recommend them to clients — but when folks get laser-focused on chasing specific numbers, they often forget to look inward to ask themselves what they’re actually hungry for, what type of exercise they feel like today, or if they’re tired and need a nap.
By contrast, there are people who set few if any goals. They don’t think about it, or they are unsure how to set realistic goals. Non-goal people may be quite productive but embrace a spontaneous and go-with-the-flow mentality. Others don’t set goals because they have their head down, tunneling through their to-do lists. Or they are simply afraid of failing.
But by not setting goals we miss opportunities for growth, and for deriving meaning not only from reaching a goal, but from the string of challenging moments that got us there.
When it comes to crafting goals, being both specific and realistic is key, as is seen in the SMART Goal framework, a time-tested tool for guiding goal setting. SMART goals are…
Specific: who, what, when, where and why
Measurable: outcomes can be quantified
Achievable: challenging but realistic to achieve
Relevant: align with personal motivations and values
Time-bound: a timeframe is set which helps with accountability
The SMART goal framework, created for use in business, is helpful in many contexts. However, it misses a critical element of health goals: habit change.
If you’re remodeling your house or working toward an academic degree, you have a series of task-oriented steps to complete. Health goals also have tactical steps, but they often require a whole lot of mental work to get started and stay committed.
In my 3-month program, I will help you create or adjust your health goals so that they’re realistic and doable, and I’ll provide you with support and tools to make habit change happen and stick.
Below are a few of my favorite habit-changing suggestions, derived from Atomic Habits by James Clear, my favorite resource in the habit realm.
Choose a goal(s) that align with your identity, or who you wish to become (i.e. someone with more energy, or who can hike a 14-er, or who feels less anxious).
Choose small steps toward your goal, celebrate your wins and see them as proof you are becoming the person above.
Surround yourself with people who have a healthy lifestyle or share similar goals
Happy and Healthy New Year to you!
