Want to have the have the strongest finish to this year? Do these 5 things ...
- Lizzie M
- Nov 4, 2022
- 10 min read
Updated: Nov 6, 2022
Are you surprised that 2022 is ending in 2 months??? Already ??? Shocked? ...Yes me too!
Usually the shock means that we are not quite on track of where we would ideally like to be. With the ramifications of the chaos of covid, this is understandable. So grant yourself a little bit of space for getting this far, as generally I feel we are all trying our best.
In essence don't be disheartened. Try to look forwards and take action because It's all what we do in the moments from now, that can change your destiny for the end of the year and into 2023.
If you genuinely want to get ahead, so you end 2022 feeling vital and begin 2023 with a strong kickstart, then read on for my tips to get you ahead to finish the end of the year strong.
We can hope and pray things will get better, but at the end of the day nothing will happen if you don't make it so. Therefore, I will blatantly let you know that wrote this article to strongly encourage you to TAKE ACTION on these points because I really do want you achieve all you set out to for 2022 and beyond.
Find focus with clarity by setting 3 simple goals.
Before I get started with this topic. Aloha busy parents and workers! A gentle reminder that you're actually not too busy to be be fit and well. You've probably just forgotten that you can indeed, find the time if you're focussed on exactly what you need to do. Right? This clarity is even more important for you now, as we get into the busy time of the year as its bustled with with events, parties and stuff that overloads and potentially overwhelms many of us.
The gap between the fitness you have and the fitness you want, comes down to finding focus so that you can double down on all the things that truly matter.
Time to get clear on what you want before hectic hits. Start planning your best self now. Set three simple goals of what you want to achieve in the next 60-90days for your fitness and wellness. Write them down. In my experience, it's best to go in depth with these goals as to the how's and the why's, so you create true meaning behind your work and that meaning translates directly in to your energy and drive into achieving these goals, ultimately creating your change in the next 60-90days. When you have deep and meaningful how's and why's, it helps you to stay strong and on track when the suck factor kicks in, on the bad days.
2. Prioritise your time specifically upon your above goals
Most of the time we can prevent overwhelm when we remember to pick up the the pen and write on the piece of paper our priorities so we can get more organised. Once we can prioritise our time on our goals, we can begin to filter out all the ways we waste time on the things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter that much. Reducing the distractions whilst uplifting the productivity creates better, faster outcomes.
Firstly, best to look at all the positive steps you can make. At the start of every day, write one thing down, that you will work on to get you closer to your goal and make a massive effort to stick to it. Record down your success in a journal, acknowledge your victory even if it's a small change. Habitualise this step in to your regular routine by repeating this daily. Be super decisive about what you want and commit to it! All the small achievements really do count because when we consistently apply the small improvements, we create our big changes over the timeframe of your 60-90 day goals.
Secondly, getting organised with time, also means that we need to assess where we are wasting time. Is it time to detox your time bank? Because once our time is gone- it's gone! You cannot retrieve it. We all have days where we seem not to get anything done, however it's useful to have a good think about, is this you everyday?. If you are getting too easily distracted, procrastinating on the silly stuff, this will hinder your ability to super charge you, to change.
Common time wasters are letting social media consume you, rather than you using it to make improvements to your life or business, Netflix shows, scrolling at the news too often. Look at all the things that are coming from the outside world causing the addictive dopamine hit that are very negative to your mind and your time once accumulated. Are you letting situations get you stressed out rather than learning to manage the stress? and therefore saving your time on overthinking and putting it to good use AKA towards your goals?! in essence, all this time you are potentially wasting on the above, could be used elsewhere to get you closer to your goals. Aim to make one or two switches every week, to make your improvements more doable. Keep your routine of being focussed like this, make it your new normal.
3. Assess where you are now so you can track better your improvements
If we don't know what status our current fitness and wellness is in, it's going to be rather tricky to build a succinct program or track any kind of improvement. Seeing and feeling your improvements over time are what motivates most clients to keep moving forwards, because it gives feedback where they are progressing and what parts need more work on in order to create ultimate change (see point number 1). Assessing your current fitness and wellness status is such a powerful tool! It also helps you to set micro goals (see point above) and that really does add a whole load of fuel to your daily fire of change.
This is one of the major reasons why I ensure that every client that I see, receives a comprehensive assessment. Firstly then, we can focus on the areas that need working on the most in the programming and also then we can track changes over time.
If you decide to opt for doing this solo, there are some super easy ways you can implement assessment and tracking. If your goal is weight loss or shape change for example, there's nothing quite like the reality of your body composition with a photo. For instance, by taking one picture from the front, one from the side and the back at the start of your quest for change, then in a few weeks time taking another picture from the front side and back you can clearly see changes. Amazing! This is a powerful way to boost your motivation and to see what your doing is really working.
Also, another way to track is to journal down your weights that you are lifting, how you are eating and hydrating, and feeling from these changes, the time or the FTP rate that you got on your bike test. The key here is- dissect it down, write it down, pen to paper. Super charge yourself to success in 60 days.
4. Prepare your hydration, meals, your training and your mindset
Preparation can literally save your bacon on a tough day. Not only does preparation save time, but it saves you from reaching for the wrong foods/drinks at the wrong times.
Preparation doesn't have to be difficult and can be aligned in different ways. Your preparation works best when it considers your own sleep, nutrition and energy cycle and all your above information.
Sleep Prep
How will you prepare your body for the ultimate sleep? We all know how important sleep is for recovery, energy and vitality during waking hours, body composition changes, healthy eating patterns, physical health and mental wellbeing -right? Yes if we are parents of young ones, or if you are going through some stress or the menopause, controlling sleep quality is of course, going to be more challenging. In these situations, my best advice is to focus on the controllables. What can you control? Such as room temperature, light/device pollution, regulating a nightly routine, supplementation, breathing, meditation, sound healing, food choices, hydration. What can you implement from this list here to prepare your body into the best possible sleep for your situation?
Food Prep:
Apart from the obvious, the reason why getting our nutrition right is so important is because the right food choices can really make a huge impact on our mood, our energy and our immunity, therefore, our overall wellbeing. This is because our nutrition choices can literally heal or harm our body, as they directly impact the wellbeing of our gut/brain axis. In terms of nutrition, the reason why clients commonly fall off the bandwagon is because they haven't prepared foods or their weekly/daily plan based on what's happening in their day and then panic and end up eating all the foods that are destructive for their goals. Firstly, one 'treat meal' will not throw you off the bandwagon. So cut yourself a little slack and let's think about it logically. Just like when all your good daily habits consistently applied create results, poor choices consistently applied over time, equal the opposite AKA weight gain and ill health. Although we might think it, we don't wake up suddenly one day and have added 10kg to our shape - it really doesn't happen by chance. It happens over the choices you apply time. So when you have 1 meal that's out of alignment for your goals, remember it's not going to derail you. If you know you can do better, then prepare better. Preparation doesn't have to be complicated. For example, you could write down your 'go to' easy healthy meal if you've had a stressful day and slap it in plain sight on your fridge. That way you do not have to think about what you will eat, when your brain is scrambled from the stressful day.
Another super easy way to food prep is to cook a few extra portions of your dinner and eat this for breakfast lunch dinner the next few days not only is this an awesome way to prepare, it's so cost effective and saves a tonne of time too.
Training prep:
Preparing your training distinctly based on your goals, is an absolute must if you want to supercharge your success in the next few weeks. It prevents you from meandering from workout to workout without any real aim. If you have no idea how to do this, then best to ask your trainer or your coach to help you to program your workouts. Side note: The amount of clients that start off with me- hoping that their workout hopping will work, only to find out that it's making them running in circles, is truly unbelievable. Clever, training programming considers your goals, on your fitness level and your commitment level, so you don't over train or indeed under train.
If you'd prefer to attack this solo, best to keep things super simple: Each Sunday, write how many workouts you will commit to for the following week and what each workout will consist of. These workouts will directly correspond to your goals for the best outcomes.
Mindset prep
A cluttered over chattering mind can be detrimental to your 60 day goals because it can steer you off road, cause undue stress and anxiety and stall your efforts to creating your strongest possible finish for 2022. Therefore, how can we work with ourself rather than against ourself to speed up our success? How can we boost our daily performance with mindset techniques ? By using strategies that help us get to know all the good parts whilst learning about the parts of ourselves that need more work. Get to know yourself and develop yourself by engaging in regular practices that allow you to still your mind and create centring such as breathing, meditation, diarising gratitude, affirmations and journaling at the end of each day what worked well in your day what could improve as this ultimately enables you to see what your next day goals will revolve around in order for you to mancinise success. .
5. Stay consistent and accountable by surrounding yourself with others that are running for success.
You've probably heard the phrase that 'you are the average sum of the 5 people that you spend most of your time with'. A concept coined by the infamous Jim Rohn. This is absolutely true. Humans tend to morph into the habits and behaviours of the 5 people that we most hang around with. This happens whether it's good or bad. Totally true that, you will find the value of your life within your tribe. Worth having a moment to analyse then, who we are spending time with and whether this time, is having a positive or negative charge on your life. When we set ourselves the task to create success in the short and longer term, the last thing we need, is to have people dragging us back to base camp. By the way, this often this happens subconsciously. So it's definitely worth taking some time to go a little deeper into analysing what's working in your favour and what's not within your tribe.
Here's some classic examples that I've seen and experienced over the years.
We eat the foods that are not so ideal for our ultimate goals because its more accepted by our 5 closest to us. Or perhaps, your family are not on board with your new healthy eating plan and training regime, therefore don't support you physically or emotionally, so you end up back on the non-healthy eating plan and stop training to appease their wishes rather than yours and pile the weight back on.
We may stay up late and binge watch the latest tv shows and compromise sleep, although it's not a good outcome for our wellness goals because it's something you talk about a lot with your nearest and dearest. It keeps the connection between you. If you don't watch the show or follow the sport what will you talk about?
We may go out for team drinks/events with our work friends and feel embarrassed not to drink alcohol, even though drinking alcohol all the time doesn't support your current goals.
There's something that I can tell you is absolutely true here, you will only accelerate to your desires of kicking your goals and being strong finisher of 2022/23 and beyond, if you have the support from your tribe. Without a doubt, having the right tribe will accelerate you from making your dreams into a reality because it's going to keep you making the good decisions more, it will keep you accountable to your goals, whilst also encouraging consistency, where most people fall off track. This may not be with family. Initially, you may have to join a group outside of your family and immediate friend network. If you know your family would benefit from creating positive change too, one of the most massively influential actions, that I have seen clients in the past, is to get them to join you on your quest for strength. Sometimes though, we may come up against resistance within the family, and it can turn out that It's going to be arduous task of changing things for the better. Although, we can work on working with a likeminded group outside of family and our regular friend network and then take a gradual approach of encourage new and better ways of eating, moving and living within our immediate network of family members, friends and work colleagues to get them on board with the changes.
So there's my top 5 tips for getting you on the path to create massive change that you intended for 2022. Little steps and big steps all count. The most important thing to do here is to pluck up the courage and actually take those steps and take them as soon as possible.
If you need some help, feel free to drop me a line.
Keep moving forward strong always
Yours in strength
Lizzie
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