Many people use the new year to embrace a fresh start and make positive changes to improve their lives. Unfortunately, most resolutions will be long forgotten by February because they often lack purpose and a meaningful connection to themselves. However, you can significantly increase your success by determining your why, which is the personal motivation behind your goals.
The Problem With New Year’s Resolutions
The beginning of the year represents a clean slate, a time to reflect, reset, and establish new priorities. It provides a starting point for motivation to strive to improve yourself. Additionally, it’s a tradition to set New Year’s resolutions, which can build enthusiasm among friends and family and encourage everyone to pursue self-improvement.
Unfortunately, most New Year’s resolutions focus on what you want to achieve but fail to address why you want to achieve it. Goals like losing weight or exercising more sound great but lack a deeper meaning to stay committed to your goals. Without an emotional tie to your goals, it’s easy to lose interest once the excitement and motivation wane. Discovering your why will help drive you toward your goal as you navigate any temporary setback or obstacle.
What Is Your Why?
Your why is your personal motivation that keeps you going when times get tough. It’s the emotional anchor that reminds you why your goal matters. Unlike a New Year’s resolution, your why taps into your values, making your goal more meaningful and realistic to achieve.
New Year’s resolutions, and any goal for that matter, should be more than a surface-level aspiration. They must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Well-defined goals clarify the steps you’ll take to achieve them. However, without your why, even the most well-defined goal goes unaccomplished without that emotional connection to sustain long-term motivation.
For example, losing weight can reduce the risks of many health issues, such as obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure. So, your why could be that you want to reduce your risk of chronic illness and live an active, fulfilling life.
Exercise has many benefits that improve your quality of life. Therefore, your why could be that you want to feel strong and energetic so you can play with your kids and be a healthy role model. By connecting your fitness journey to your family, you can stay motivated and turn your goal into a sustainable habit.
How To Determine Your Why
Your why is the reason you are changing your habits and striving for self-improvement. Writing down your thoughts can be helpful as you narrow in on your why. Here are some questions to ask yourself.
- What’s motivating you to make this change now?
- What’s holding you back from living the life you want?
- Picture yourself after achieving your goal. How do you feel? What’s different?
Sometimes, asking yourself why can help you dig deeper into your true intention. Although many four-year-olds like this game, it is actually an effective way to find deeper meaning. The 5 Whys Technique is a problem-solving method that uncovers the real meaning by asking why five times for an answer. It’s used in business, engineering, and personal development to go beyond the surface-level answer to find deeper meaning and insight.
For example, let’s say your goal is to exercise regularly. So, start by asking yourself why.
- Why do I want to exercise regularly? To lose weight.
- Why do I want to lose weight? To feel more confident in my body.
- Why do I want to feel more confident in my body? I want to feel comfortable in social situations.
- Why do I want to feel comfortable in social situations? So I can enjoy life and focus on connecting with others instead of looking like I do.
- Why is enjoying life and connecting with others important? Because building meaningful relationships brings happiness and fulfillment to my life.
So, your why is that you want to exercise regularly to enhance your happiness and fulfillment by fostering meaningful relationships and feeling more confident about yourself.
Lastly, contemplate what happens if you do not pursue your why. Try visualizing the negative outcomes. This can help reinforce your commitment and motivation. Consider writing your why somewhere you will see it often to remind you why you’re pursuing your goals.
How To Turn Your Why Into Actionable Steps
Once you know your why, it’s essential to lay out a plan. SMART goals can help you achieve your why. SMART is an acronym where each letter is an integral part of a well-thought-out goal.
| Specific | Your goal should be limited. For example, a goal to “lose weight” isn’t specific. Instead, be specific, like “lose 20 lbs or 10 kg”. |
| Measurable | A goal should have one or more metrics to track. For example, you can use a scale to track your weight. |
| Achievable | Goals have to be possible. Maybe you won’t run a 4-minute mile, but you can improve your pace. |
| Relevant | Goals should align with your ambitions, dreams, and values. |
| Time-bound | Goals should have an end date to help you stay on track. It creates a sense of urgency and encourages you to keep moving forward. |
Breaking down your why into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound steps will set you up for success. Here is an example of how to turn “exercising more” into a SMART goal.
| Specific | I will begin a regular exercise routine to improve my overall fitness. |
| Measurable | I will track my progress by recording the number of days I exercise each week and the duration of each session. |
| Achievable | I will start with 20-30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise 3 times a week and gradually increase the duration and frequency as I build stamina. |
| Relevant | Regular exercise is vital for my health and well-being and aligns with my goal of leading a more active lifestyle. |
| Time-bound | I will commit to this three-month workout routine. |
Track Your Progress
Tracking your progress helps you stay on track because you’re paying attention to your behavior and where you are related to your goals. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing your efforts pay off, and continuously tracking your progress helps measure your improvements.
An app or journal can help you manage goals, track progress, and set reminders. It can help you stay motivated and consistent. Consistently reaching your goals can boost your self-esteem and sense of accomplishment, improving your mental health.
Changing your habits is already hard enough. However, some tools, such as a fitness tracker, can make tracking your progress easier, and other smart devices can update some apps automatically. Regardless of how you track your progress, it’s vital to track whenever you do something related to your goals. All that information will be helpful, especially when things are not going well.
Stay Flexible And Reassess Often
An essential part of staying on track and ensuring that your efforts align with your why is to routinely assess your progress. You don’t have to wait until you are struggling. In fact, you should regularly review your journal and evaluate where you are in your journey.
It’s a good time to evaluate your progress when you achieve a milestone. For example, if your goal was to run a 5K and you achieved it, reassess that goal to determine whether you want to aim for a longer race, more speed, or shift to another fitness goal altogether.
Progress often brings new knowledge and abilities that may lead to new opportunities. As a result, you should reflect on your goals and determine if you need to make any changes.
On the other hand, if you’re struggling and not seeing any progress, it could mean your goal was too ambitious, not well-defined, or misaligned with your why. You could break your goals into smaller chunks, adjust your timetable, or redefine success. For example, if your goal was to exercise five days a week but you consistently manage only two, redefine your goal to be more realistic, such as aiming for three days, and reassess when you consistently achieve that goal.
Sometimes, events outside your control, such as a new job, moving, or changes in your family, impact your ability to pursue your goals. Even a loss of motivation can indicate your goal no longer aligns with your why. In either case, reevaluate your goals and adjust your expectations and timeline, or consider whether your goal still aligns with your why. If not, modify or replace your goal with something more meaningful.
Reassessing your goals doesn’t mean you’re giving up. Instead, it’s about staying flexible to ensure your journey remains meaningful and achievable.
The Takeaway
New Year’s resolutions and surface-level goals are not sustainable long-term without knowing your why. Your why is a deeper emotional connection to your goals that makes them meaningful and keeps you motivated for the long term. Determining your why and breaking it down into SMART goals will define the steps to achieve them. Tracking your progress will give you a birdseye view of where you are on your journey. If your goals are becoming unattainable, instead of giving up, reassess and redefine.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
