“5..4..3..2..1..” 

Everyone has gathered together. A year's worth of effort has been put into now. Whether you have been playing video games or working all year, everyone has gone around the Earth Once. You look to your left and see your ask. “Well what's your New year's resolution? '' Common answers like losing weight, working out, learning a new skill or hobby, saving money, and stop procrastinating. Their themes are brought up every year, but who are the few that really adhere to their resolution? 

As you walk into the gym you're amazed by the atrocious amount of people wandering around the gym. You see people doing exercise you’ve never seen before or with improper form, but you know everyone starts somewhere and you keep moving. As you progress throughout the months you can see the amount of people slowly declining. Maybe not immediately but over the months people don’t stay with their goals. In reality only about 9% of people actually stick to their goals. Now Why is this? 

Throughout the new year people reflect on what they did right and did wrong and are motivated to change these things the next year. This idea that things could be different motivates you in the short term. Although you may feel this motivation now this will not last for long. When you lose motivation to do something most people stop doing it and unless you have the discipline to continue doing it you stop, and this is the trap that most people get sucked into. You start becoming comfortable, and wanting the short term gain rather than continuing and sticking around for the long success.  

Now the question is how do we continue to stay disciplined. One suggestion; if for example your goal is to work out doing it as soon as possible so you can get it out of the way. You also need to figure out when your brain wants to be lazy and makes excuses for going. The hardest part of going to the gym is getting up and going. Well maybe you have something that you need to do all day like eating healthy, not putting it off is an important step that can take place in all kinds of goals. It is easy to say not today I’ll do it tomorrow but this usually becomes an endless cycle of procrastination. Other things like starting slowly at first for example eating a mixture of healthy and unhealthy and building up to your goal of eating clean. One last thing to remember is to let loose once in a while and allow yourself to be able to eat junk food but not very often. 

As we come to a conclusion and reflect on maybe sometimes how we didn’t stick with our goals now we realize we can change that. We cannot make our goals unrealistic, but if we continue our efforts, stay disciplined and make sure we enjoy ourselves while doing it, we are able to accomplish our goals as we go into the new year. So now I leave it up to you the reader, how will you positively change this 2024?