September Is The New January
Have you ever struggled with staying consistent about meeting your goals? Speaking from experience, I know this feeling all too well. With September being coined the new January, it is a great time to reset and realign with movement that makes sense for you. As school routines start back up, summer travels come to a close and the weather starts to cool, it is a great time to re-evaluate your goals and implement changes.
While social media is claiming September to be a good time to re-evaluate your goals, it is a great habit to form on a more routine basis. Goal setting can work and look a lot of different ways, from weekly goals you set for yourself to long term goals to accomplish within a year. For health and wellness, conducting a quarterly audit can be a great way to hold yourself accountable while also allowing you enough time to actually see change.
When conducting an audit, taking a holistic approach is the way to go. Mental and physical health are intimately connected, and they are affected by every facet of our life. Work, school, family and friendships all play a role in helping or hindering our wellness goals. While barriers can exist, there are always ways to work within the barriers to create a manageable plan to stay on track with goals. For example, if you know that the quarter you are entering at work is filled with deadlines and deliverables, it can feel overwhelming to add a ton of new health and wellness goals. In stages where our priorities have to shift, we just need to understand how we can still take care of ourselves.
This is often where many of us go wrong at the start of the year (myself included!). We create lofty, overwhelming goals and way too many of them. While we may be able to implement these changes for a few weeks, we quickly get caught up in life and all these aspirations we have fall to the wayside. So, taking the time as we move into the final quarter of the year to reset before January can help you get in the groove of these habits long before the New Year's resolutions start.
What if you’re having trouble finding a goal? That makes total sense. Right now, many of us are refocusing and redirecting, but we are floating. Creating hard stops or number goals can be a great way to start. You could decide to run a turkey trot this year on Thanksgiving. You could shoot to get at least 120 grams of protein a day. You could aim to move your body for 30 minutes five days a week. While it seems silly, our goals are best met when they are clearly defined and measurable. I like to break all of my goal setting sessions into a few categories:
What are my financial goals?
What are my health and wellness goals?
What are my relationship goals?
What are my mental health goals?
What are my work goals?
By creating overarching goals in each category, you can begin to dissect them and create action items on a monthly, and even weekly, basis. What you will find is that all of these goals will feed into one another, and small changes in each category will make big changes overall.
And this doesn’t have to be a lengthy or scary process. Two or three major goals in each category will set you on the path for success. It will not change overnight, but each quarter you can review what went well, what areas could be improved, and oftentimes, you can give yourself a pat on the back for reaching your goals. The power of putting your goals down on pen and paper, so you can see them and go back to them, will inspire you to change.
So, let’s think about how a goal can impact all areas of your life. Many people are becoming “sober curious” and are exploring the role that alcoholic beverages play in their lives. Say you are interested in this and one of your goals is to reduce the number of days that you drink from three to one. This can impact finances because switching from alcoholic beverages to NA options can reduce the cost of going out or your grocery bill. Reducing alcohol consumption impacts health in a positive way because it not only reduces overall caloric intake for the week, but it also improves sleep, reduces inflammation in the body and lowers blood pressure. Mental clarity and health become better, as reduced consumption improves brain function. Relationships can often shift as activities change to encourage more open communication and exploration of shared interests. Finally, it can impact productivity at work because you have more energy throughout the day.
As exemplified, a goal to reduce drinking by two days can change every aspect of life. While it may fall under a health and wellness goal, creating changes in your status quo in any area can drastically improve your overall wellbeing. Imagine where you will be if you start to reach these goals across the board. So let’s start today. Let’s take action to write our goals down, create an action plan for reaching them and start to execute. And if you need help? We are here to support you. Our six-week kickstart program is exactly this; by reviewing your goals from a holistic perspective, our health coach Jenn will help you find a way to meet all these goals. Weekly check-ins make this process manageable, and it gives you the opportunity to be held accountable. You do not have to be left floating in space this time of year, we have a solution to get you where you need to be.
We will check-in at the beginning of the year, but you’ve got this. Let this be your time to go into fall inspired with yourself as a priority. We are always here for support and ready to help you become better than before.