Should we be setting new years resolutions?

Happy 2024!

However you’re entering this year feeling… I hope that the year genuinely treats you well.

In the true spirit of a personal trainer, I thought I would start off the year by talking about goal setting and new years resolutions,

Now, I can hear some of your eyes rolling in their sockets already.

I’m fully aware that this email probably isn’t your first prompt this year to push you to start thinking about what you want to ~achieve~ this year.

Whenever the new year rolls around and I encourage people to talk about their goals, I pick up a vibe that gives me the impression that many of us have a negative association with goal setting, particularly when they’re set in January.

I think this could be for a few reasons.

Thinking about what you want to achieve in a year is very daunting.

Like, do we really need to always have some sort of goal for every area of our life? Is it possible to just be content with how things are already?

Of course it is.

Nobody needs to set goals.

And I do believe that learning  to be ok with our lives as they are, is a component of long term happiness.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t set goals?

Well, not necessarily.

I do think that having goals to work towards can assist in creating structure in our lives and through that, yield more life satisfaction.

But I think where we go wrong is we tend to think of goals as just the end point - with no ‘why’ or ‘how’.

We don’t challenge our own reasonings for ‘why’ we might want something, we just have this idea in our heads that once we have it, we will feel good.

On top of that, we don’t actually consider or properly plan the process required to get what we want.

So a lot of us do become cynical around goal setting, because we feel like our goals are always the same anyway - but we keep not being able to achieve them so we avoid setting them.

I’m not pushing you to set goals this year if you don’t want to.

But I encourage you to get curious about if you were to set goals… What would you do differently this year?

The first step to successful goal setting is setting goals that actually mean something important to you.

When I look back at times where I’ve set goals that I didn’t achieve, they were all things that I knew I didn’t actually want that badly. 

I used to think that I wanted 6 pack abs, but as it turns out, I just want to know that I’m doing the best that I can to look after my body.

I used to think that I wanted to be able to do a handstand push-up, but it turns out that I just enjoy learning new skills and feeling playful - and I can do that in plenty of other ways.

I haven’t felt the need to set big fitness goals for a few years now, because even though my well-being and fitness is important to me, I know that my happiness isn’t proportionate to how my body looks or how strong or fit I am.

“But Lauren, you’re already a super sexy, wonder-woman, absolutely flawless and perfect, incredibly fit and strong role-model anyway”

Thank you, I’m aware of how amazing I am, but I want to emphasise that the way that I look hasn’t actually changed hugely since I first became a personal trainer 7 years ago, but my mindset around fitness and body image certainly has. 

I genuinely did used to always feel a sense of inadequacy within my profession because I believed that how I looked would determine how successful I could become. As a result, I never did feel happy in my body until I finally started to intentionally work on my own body image and stop tying my self worth to how I looked. 

So I encourage you to think about when you’re setting goals…

Is it the number on the scales that’s important to you? Or is it not being all consumed by constant negative thoughts to do with how your body looks?

Is it being able to fit into your clothes from a few years ago that’s important to you? Or is it feeling desirable to your partner?

A lot of the time, it’s not actually the ‘goal’ that we think we need to achieve, that gets us what we want. 

It’s the action steps to help us get there that get us the real results.

Showing up for yourself consistently, whether it’s through movement, rest, nutrition, meditation, spending time with others, finding yourself in the flow state with anything… 

Gives us more satisfaction than ‘achieving’ anything. 

So yes, it’s fine to want something, and then go after it through working hard…

But rather than tying all your hopes and expectations of fulfilment to this thing you really want…

Invest your efforts into implementing habits and processes that cultivate good feelings more often, and your journey will be far more rewarding.

(This is starting to sound a lot like The Alchemist now).

I’ll end my spiel here, I hope this gives you some inspiration for the New Year, and all the best for 2024!

Take care,

L

x