Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? 

Some of the funny suggestions I have heard are:

• Order every drink on the Starbucks menu!
• Treat your car to regular disco carwashes!
• Perfect your favourite celebrity impression!

How do you feel about them? 

If you made any, are they still going?

They are very helpful for some people and there are pros to committing things to paper and deciding to take certain actions.

Whatever your past experiences with resolutions are, January can still be a helpful time for your health. 

Here are 3 reasons why:

1. The new year can be a fresh start. 

As the clock strikes midnight on 31st December and ticks over to 1st January, there’s no real difference. It’s just a date; we all know that. But there’s something mental that changes and makes us feel like it’s a fresh start, and we can use that to our advantage. There’s no better place to start the next stage of your health journey than right now.

You might have heard the saying that the best time to start something was yesterday, and the second-best time to start something is today. And you’ve got no choice! You can’t start your health journey from any other place than where you are right now. So, it’s an opportunity to draw a line under whatever has gone on in the past. So draw a line, get rid of any guilt, and move forward.

You can establish where you are now and where you want to be. You can decide what you need to work through and overcome this year, what obstacles may be in your way, and take it one step at a time. Ask yourself: what would be the alternative to not helping yourself and working on your health this year? If you do nothing, this time next year you may be sitting in the same place. And doing nothing is not really doing nothing after all; in reality, you are moving backward.

So, take this as a fresh start: there’s no better place to start from than now. Draw lines, get rid of any negativity from your experiences in the past, and move forward, one step at a time.

2. A new year gives you a chance to reassess how you spend your time and money concerning your health. 

Where’s your time going? Where’s your money going? Is it going on things that are important? Or is some of it, even if you don’t have much time or money, getting frittered away on things that aren’t benefitting you?

Are you investing wisely in your health by investing wisely in your time and resources, or are you leaving it all to chance? Are you playing a bit of a lottery with your health? This is a really good time to reprioritise, to look at your budget and your bank statements, and to work out where your money is going.

The principle doesn’t just have to apply to money either; this is also a good opportunity to look at how you spend your time. We all have different demands on our time; some of us have more time available than others, but whatever your current situation, this is a chance to work out what you are spending your time doing and whether that is supporting your health.

3. Take advantage of the camaraderie generated when people around you are in a similar position, starting the year with hopes and goals they want to achieve. 

Use any accountability you can grab hold of; find people who’ve got similar goals and want similar things for their lives. Surround yourself with the people, mindsets, tools, and books that will support you and spur you on.

January is an ideal time to ride the wave with everyone adopting a shared mindset to move forward in health.

If you are looking for some January encouragement, come and join us tomorrow morning at 10am on Zoom as we look at how we move forward into 2024!