If You Wait Until the New Year to Start Getting Healthy…
My wife asked me “What are your New Years’ resolutions?”
I immediately responded that I had none. Without hesitation.
I proposed a question to her. I asked her to name a previous New Year’s resolution that actually WORKED. Just 1. From any year.
She couldn’t. Nor could I.
It’s amazing how something with such a horrible track record could still be considered a reliable benchmark for future success.
Why Are You Waiting?
This was the first year where I really felt like I understood the ridiculousness of the New Year’s resolution. Part of it, I think was just a matter of maturing a little more this year. But I also think part of it was the fact that I made an intentional choice NOT to wait for the New Year, and started the “75 Hard” program at the beginning of November, effectively canceling all the Thanksgiving pies and Christmas cookies for the year.
At the time, I felt like if I did not start the plan, immediately, then I would never start it. Trying to predict what you will be motivated by in the future is impossible, and that’s the entire foundation of the resolution, It’s an impossible pipedream.
Staving off things you know you should do is procrastination, pure and simple. And why do we procrastinate ANYTHING? Simply put, because we don’t want to do it right now.
But think about that for a minute. If we don’t want to do it right now, what makes us think we would EVER want to do it? If we aren’t motivated enough in the present, what makes us think the future holds anything different?
Good Things Don’t Always Come to Those Who Wait
Motivation creates action.
Motivational speaker Eric Thomas says “When You Want To Succeed As Bad As You Want To Breathe… Then You’ll Be Successful!”
That motto is applicable regarding New Year’s resolutions. The desire to breathe is internal, its beyond our ability to control it, really. The body wants the breathe, and it will take it.
The body will not wait. Without that breathe, it will die, so there is no “resolutions”. There is no “waiting”. The body takes action. It knows what it wants.
Do you?
