by Tash Weddle
The New Year is upon us and if you’re like most people, you’ve probably set some kind of resolution to get healthier, decrease body fat, or just feel better physically. I commend you on your desire for healthy change. Unfortunately, if you’re like most people you won’t be sticking to your new found behaviors even into February.
Why is it that so few can hold onto their conviction long enough to see their New Year’s resolutions come to fruition?
I have a couple of theories:
1) Paralysis by analysis.
Sometimes people get so caught up in finding the perfect plan and the information overload that exists on the internet, in magazines and diet books that they can never settle on any one plan of action and wind up doing nothing.
2) Attachment to the problem.
It sounds crazy, but often times people are more comfortable with their misery than they are with the idea of happiness. This gets disguised as a feeling that what we desire requires too much sacrifice, but what we’re actually doing is sabotaging ourselves. The process itself is where the good feelings, which are what we ultimately want, are derived – not in the outcome. We need to remind ourselves that although we will never arrive at perfection, our true desire is the feeling and sense of accomplishment that moving forward in life gives us.
3) The wrong motivation.
Probably the most common deterrent we face when we set out to improve ourselves, especially physically, is that our desire for change is born out of self-condemnation. We hate what we see when we look in the mirror or we ridicule ourselves when we can’t fit into our clothes. We set out to change our painful situation, but we forget that as long as we continue to drag our self-loathing thoughts with us, we’ll continue to create a future that mirrors our past.
One of the first things I tell women who come to me wanting help improving their physique is that they will never achieve their goals through self-condemnation and that self-acceptance – NOW – is a requirement for self-improvement in the future. Of the countless women that I’ve witnessed transform their bodies, I can tell you that all of them had one thing in common: they eventually let go of their self-defeating inner voice and forgave themselves for where they were starting from. This self-acceptance is what allowed them to keep achieving small success day in and day out, leading to big change.
Tash Weddle is President and CEO of The New Beginnings Center, a non-profit organization with a mission of providing women, regardless of age, income or background, with fitness and nutrition coaching as well as behavior change/personal development classes that will help them achieve healthy lifestyles and new self-concepts. Tash is also the owner/operator at TNB-Fitness, a women’s only personalized training studio.