How to Stick to your Goals

Whether you are starting afresh, or still working on your new year resolutions, use your willpower to help you stick to your goals  Reminder – your willpower is like your secret weapon, it’s your power, your inner resolve, your discipline. Exercise it like a muscle and you can achieve your health related goals.

How can we make our willpower work better?

Researchers believe that by structuring our lives so that many of our decisions are automatic rather than active,  we can strengthen our resolve around goals. We spend about a quarter of our waking hours making decisions, using up our well of willpower.  When  tempting decisions come along we may already have reached ‘decision fatigue’, where we choose the easiest option. This may of course be ‘blueberry muffin and no exercise with that thank you’!

Learn how to work with willpower

1. Avoid tempting situations

Out of sight and out of mind really does work.  If you are cutting down on biscuits  don’t buy any.  If you want biscuits for others in your household then keep them in an opaque container in the back  of the cupboard. Buy biscuits you don’t like! Make it easy to say no.

2. Plan Plan Plan

Make an action plan as to how you will achieve your particular resolution.  Write down all the steps to get you to where you want to be.  Do you want to walk 5 k every day? Do you want to run a marathon? Buy the trainers, the watch, the kit, the headlamp, the waterproof  jacket, the hat, the gloves.  Schedule your training programme into your diary. Know the route you intend to take. Is anyone going with you?  Your plan is no longer a decision to be made. Like turning up for work, you show up for your training programme.

Now document your steps, monitor your progress, and feel proud.

3. Pin it

Whatever you are trying to do write it down. Take a photo and make it your phone screensaver. Put post-it notes on your bathroom mirror, inside your office locker, on your computer. Remind yourself all the time why you are trying to achieve this particular goal.  Reminding yourself regularly what it is you are trying to achieve, and why, will strengthen your motivation and your ability to get there.

4. Think your way there

Be confident of your goal. Be confident you will achieve it. Rehearse what you will say if others are trying to tempt you from your good intentions. Prepare your answers in advance e.g. “I no longer drink during the week.  I save it all for the weekend.”  It doesn’t matter if this is a goal you are working towards for the hundredth time.  Believe this time is the right time.

5. Eat regularly

Though food may have nothing to do with what you are trying to achieve, eating regularly will help you get there. Because your brain runs on glucose skipping meals and trying to resist temptation can leave your brain depleted of its willpower.  By eating regularly we not only fuel our brains we also fuel our willpower.

6. Choose wisely

1. Really think about what you are trying to achieve with your healthy lifestyle.
2. Then choose one great habit to work on to begin.
3. Focus on this particular habit within your bigger picture to improve your chances of being successful.
4. Consider how this habit will fit with your daily life.
5. Break it down into really small steps.
6. When you feel this habit has become part of your normal routine,  move onto the next habit for the bigger picture.