Getting back on track in life can be a particularly tough thing to accomplish. Sure, the new year helps to motivate you some since everyone seems to love sharing their new year’s resolutions with one another on social media.
The thing is, how often do those people actually stick to their newly made routines? How often do they stick to it through a month? Half a year? For life?
Well, not often, I’m sure you could’ve guessed. A lot of resolutions on lists are life-changing goals that simply remain unaccomplished because, well, they’re pretty tough to do. To accomplish a life-changing goal, you’ve got to have a life-altering shift of mindset. It’s not all as simple as throwing your junk food in a few cardboard boxes lying around your house and then taking those cardboard boxes out and dumping everything within in the dumpster.
No, it takes a new way of thinking about your everyday life. You can’t simply expect to just get up off the couch every single day and go workout simply because your to-do list remains untouched. Rather, you’ve got to show yourself why it’s important to do, how it’ll change you, and remain tough on yourself at first. It takes over two months of something to make it a routine part of your life, and here we find ourselves just two weeks into the new year.
So, what does it take, then, to shift your outlook on everything?
It takes work. And on that note, let’s compare these resolutions, these healthy changes in your mind and body, to your career.
Why do you go to your job everyday? Well, because you have to. Why do you have to? You absolutely have to make money to pay bills and eat and live, right?
Well, look at your body and your mental health as a necessity, not an option. Look at working out and eating better and budgeting as a necessity because you absolutely have to, not because you can or should or may want to. Because you have to.
Once you shift this perspective to one of necessity rather than want, you’ll begin your path to routine. That’s the first step.
Once you’ve accomplished two or three months of steady exercising, cooking your own meals, saving money, whatever it is that you deem life changing, you’ll be in a very good routine. All you have to remember, though, is that it doesn’t stop here. You’ve got to keep at it every single day. For yourself.