Ep #229: 4 Mistakes You’re Making with Your Resolutions

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach, and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives. And now I want to help you.

Hello, hello, hello Rebels. This is the last episode of 2021, I cannot believe it. And before we jump into today’s topic, I do want to let you know about a free online class that I am teaching on January 4, 2022. It’s going to help you learn how to get past your exercise excuses and become a consistent exerciser next year, and doing it the easy way instead of the hard way.

So all you have to do to get in on the class is go to notyouraveragerunner.com/excuses, or you can go to the link in the show notes. The class is January 4th, and it’s going to be recorded. So if you can’t make it live, no worries, I’ll email you the recording later. So just go to notyouraveragerunner.com/excuses to sign up. And you know what, you can just pause this podcast and go over and do that right now, I’ll wait, and come back and we will dive in.

All right. Okay, so let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Now, this is a fitness related podcast. And in the fitness industry, January is the biggest month of the year. So I feel like I would be, I don’t know remiss, is that the right word? If I didn’t talk about January and New Year’s resolutions and all that shit, okay, so I’m going to dive in.

And what we’re going to do this week is actually talk about how to set up a New Year’s resolution or a New Year’s goal that you actually have a chance of achieving. Last week we talked about the power of maybe and setting big goals. And now we’re going to be like, all right, so you’ve got these big ass goals. And that’s awesome, but how are you going to make it happen? So we’re going to dive into that today.

And I’m using the terms resolutions and goals and all of that sort of interchangeably in this episode. I mean, technically a resolution is a firm decision to do or not do something. So usually, we apply this to habits, like becoming a consistent runner or stopping smoking or whatever it is. You can also apply it to a goal with a specific endpoint like running a 5K.

But honestly, I don’t actually love the word resolution. I know a lot of other people use it. I like to say things like installing a new habit or a behavior change. But regardless of the terminology, today we’re talking about that decision to start doing something new or stop doing something that you don’t want to do anymore.

And sometimes the new habit is tied to an actual endpoint, like maybe you decide I’m going to start running. And my endpoint, my intention is to train for and finish a 5K. But most of the time, I think we set these resolutions like, oh, I just want to start running, or I want to start exercising, or I want to get stronger. I think the biggest one I hear is I want to get healthy in the new year. Right?

But how many times have you set a resolution like that, I’m just going to get stronger. I’m going to start running. I’m going to get healthy. And then after a few weeks, you sort of abandon it. I mean, be honest. Right? I sat down for myself, I tried to count out the number of resolutions that I have set and quit on in my life. And it was, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, it was like 64. 64, I’m only 54 years old so you could do the math. I had many years where I would set three or four resolutions and I don’t know, by the second week in January, gone, nothing, like not even on my radar anymore.

Actually, I’ll give myself a little bit of credit. There are two resolutions that I did keep, I quit drinking soda. In particular diet soda in, oh gosh, that was sometime in between 2000 and 2005, somewhere in there. I guess those are the aughts, I guess. I don’t know how we refer to that decade. So in the early aughts I quit drinking soda, in particular diet soda.

Which by the way, I used to get really bad body aches and headaches, and once I quit all artificial sweeteners, actually, and that included Diet Coke, and I just felt so much better, like my headaches went away. So I don’t know if for some people it doesn’t impact them. For me, Splenda, sucra, all those fake sweeteners, they gave me terrible headaches.

So I did that and earlier than that, in the 90s, I actually quit smoking. And so I didn’t do that all at the same time. And interestingly enough, when I quit smoking, for any of you out there who are trying to quit smoking, here’s how I finally did it because I tried to go cold turkey over and over and over again. Usually, I started it on New Year’s Day. And then, you know, two weeks later, I’d be smoking again.

But here’s how it finally stuck. Every time I wanted a cigarette, I would get an ice cold Diet Coke and a stick of Big Red gum, which I don’t even know if they make that anymore. Again, this was back in the 90s. And I would chew this Big Red cinnamon gum while I was drinking a Diet Coke. And there was just such a party on my taste buds that I lost interest in the cigarette.

So that actually stuck, that’s how I finally quit smoking. But then a few years later I was like, I really got to quit this diet coke habit because it’s not doing me any favors. So I quit the Diet Coke as well. But that’s totally an aside here, you didn’t need to know any of that information.

But the point I’m trying to illustrate here is I had 64 resolutions that I set that I failed and two that succeeded. So my track record isn’t great. And I suspect that yours is probably similar, right? I don’t know many people that set a resolution and bam, they just do it. Actually, I take that back, my ex-husband was like that. It used to drive me crazy, he’d be like, “Oh, I’m going to do this thing.” And then he would just fucking do it, like a monster. Like a crazy person, right?

But really, the problem isn’t that resolutions don’t work. Resolutions, they don’t fail, you guys. A resolution is just a statement, it’s words that you say. It doesn’t work for you or against you. It can’t, it’s just words. It’s not a thing that you can touch. But it also can’t do the work for you. So with a resolution, it’s how you think and feel and act with regard to that statement that you made that determines whether you’re going to follow through or not.

So today, I want to talk about the reasons that most people don’t follow through on their resolutions and what you can do about it so that maybe this is the year that you set a resolution and actually at the end of the year you’re like, “Wow, holy shit, I did that. I did that thing.”

So there’s four things. Number one, the first thing is being kind of unrealistic when you are setting your resolutions. And I know we just came off of an episode about setting big impossible goals. And when I say you’re being unrealistic, I don’t mean that your goal is too big. I don’t mean that you should start setting smaller goals or stop dreaming big. Definitely dream big. Please, all the big, enormous dreams, I love them.

What I mean when I say be realistic is I mean that you’re expecting perfection immediately. And then when you mess up or something doesn’t go as planned, you’re like, “All right, this is way too hard, I guess I quit. I can’t do it.” So getting realistic about your goals simply means thinking through all of the aspects of the change that you want to make. And then planning for how you’re going to make it happen, step wise.

We’re not just going to dive in and expect that, hey, if I want to be a consistent three time a week runner, then on day one, boom, I’m just going to wake up and I’m going to start running three times a week and it’s going to be easy. So planning for how you’re going to make it and introducing it step wise is a much more realistic way of easing yourself into a behavior change.

So for example, say you decide all right, in 2022 I’m going to become a runner. And you might think, “All right, January 1st I’m going to wake up, I’m going to be excited to run. I’ll probably run two miles, maybe three. I’ll do three miles again on January 2nd, and on January 3rd.

And then I’ll keep getting faster and going further each time because my expectation of success is a straight line. And the next thing you know I’m going to be running a half marathon and I’ll probably be 50 pounds lighter from all of that running.” This is a perfectionist fantasy for the ages.

The reality is that major habit changes like that, like going from not being a runner to somebody who runs three times a week, you don’t just snap your fingers, it takes time to install. New routines, they also take trial and error to find something that works for you and your life. So you probably won’t get it right the first time, and that’s totally normal.

If you expect that it’s perfection or nothing, though, guess what? You’re going to quit instead of figuring it out. So being realistic means being willing to fail, willing to do it wrong, willing to roll back around and say, “Okay, that didn’t work. What’s next? What can I learn?”

So instead of going all gangbusters from day one, realistic means hey, let’s start out with something smaller that’s easy to implement, that my brain doesn’t get all wound up about. And that my brain doesn’t say it has to be perfect or nothing, and then build from there. Let it be an evolution instead of expecting that you’re going to be right where you want to be on day one.

And maybe if you’re saying, “Okay, I’m going to be a runner in 2022,” maybe that looks like, okay, for the month of January I’m going to run one time a week. And then for the month of February, I’m going to try to run twice a week. And then for the month of March, I’m going to run three times a week. And then I’m going to hold there and maybe I’m going to start building my mileage from there. Okay.

So, realistic is making step wise progress. It’s understanding that failure is part of the process and being okay with it, and not expecting perfection.

All right, so number two, this one is short and sweet. Number two, the second mistake that people make is they’re very unclear about what they actually want to do. So how many times have you personally set a resolution to, oh, I’m going to get fit next year, I’m going to get healthy. I’m going to get stronger? Okay, what the fuck does that even mean? If you don’t have a way to measure your success, first of all, it’s very easy to quit on yourself because you don’t have any mile markers, right?

So if you don’t have a way to measure your success, you don’t know if you’re getting the result that you want. So when you set a resolution, you got to be specific, okay? Like my resolution is to work my way up from running zero times a week to running three times a week by the end of March. Or my resolution is to complete a half marathon training plan by August 1st and run my half marathon on August 2nd or whatever, right? So  be super specific about what you want.

I want to have a better relationship with my kids. I don’t know what that means. What does that mean? Or is it I want to have 15 minutes a day where I have an actual face to face conversation with my child. Or I want to have one family activity a week where we all do something and everybody puts their phones away. So instead of saying I want a better relationship with my kids or my significant other, put some parameters around it so that you can measure and have targets to shoot for.

So while you’re deciding that resolution, you got those parameters set up so you can assess how it’s going. But remember that those parameters, those guidelines, those mileposts, those mile markers are not there so you can say, “Oh no, I’m behind schedule. Oh no, I’m failing.” Right? They’re not there for you to beat the shit out of yourself.

They’re there for you to say, “Okay, this is where I was. This is where I am now. This is where I want to go. What do I need to do to kind of move the needle forward?” We ask that just calmly and rationally, instead of panicking and saying, “Oh my God, it’s February and I haven’t done any of the things I have to wait until next year.” That’s a perfectionist, fantasy again.

So get clear about what you want to do. Put some parameters around it so that you can measure it. And maybe you get creative and then check in with yourself, right? So that mistake of being unclear about what you want to do is what leads to quitting. But knowing exactly what you want to do is how you can say like, “Oh, am I there yet? Yes or no?”

All right, number three, the number three mistake is not understanding the reward that you’re getting out of this. Like what’s in it for you and the reasons that you want to do those things. Which are kind of two ways of saying something very similar.

But if you don’t understand basically the why behind doing your resolution, behind setting this resolution, then when it gets uncomfortable, and when it gets difficult, when it gets hard you’re going to quit. You’re going to say, “Well, fuck it, I don’t care. Why am I even doing this? What’s the point?”

So know your why. And I like to define a why, W-H-Y, not the letter Y, as the reward and the reasons. So what are you getting out of it? Is it a feeling of accomplishment? Maybe you want to feel better in your body. Maybe you want a certain race medal on your rack.

What is the reward? What are you getting out of it? What are the reasons why? Maybe the reason are you want to set a different example for your child. Or I get a lot of clients who are like, “Oh, I need to be able to run a mile in 10 minutes so I can pass a military test or something like that.” And so maybe it’s very specific like that.

But without that strong why,  understanding the reward and the reasons, you’re going to struggle to stick with your resolution. Okay, let me give you kind of a silly example. But imagine I decided on January 1st I’m going to start knitting. And the reason why I want to start knitting is because I have this big bag of yarn in my closet and it’s taking up a lot of space, this is actually a true story.

So my reward for having more room in my closet, I mean, it’s a pretty awesome reward, having more room in my closet. But also, I don’t know how to knit. Honestly, I could also just give the yarn away instead of knitting something, right? Instead of going through the process of learning to knit.

So that would solve the problem as well. So I could get the reward in multiple ways and one of them is super easy. Take the bag of yarn and give it away to somebody else. So is it likely that I’m going to start knitting on January 1st? Probably not because my reasons for wanting to do it are pretty weak.

But if my reason is because I want a scarf made out of that absolutely gorgeous yarn that’s multicolored and really, really soft. Like if my reason is, hey, I want to have a scarf and wear a scarf that goes with my navy pea coat. And I want it to be made from that beautiful yarn. Well, there are two options for me. One is to knit the thing myself. And two is to pay somebody else to do it, right?

So that’s a much stronger reason. My reward is this gorgeous scarf and my reasons are like hey, I don’t want to pay somebody else to do it but I want to wear the scarf.

So make sure that you’re spending time thinking about this resolution from the perspective of what’s in it for you? How badly do you want it? Because there’s got to be a strong reward from this goal or habit change or again, you’re not going to be motivated to stick with it.

And the number four mistake that we often make, and this is really my favorite of all of these reasons, is we forget to look for the byproducts. And what that means is understand that part of the beauty of setting goals or resolutions for yourself isn’t just the thing that you get at the end of the rainbow. It’s not just the reward, like the race medal, or the beautiful scarf, or feeling better in your body from all the running.

I mean, those things are awesome, do not get me wrong on that. But the byproducts of all of the work you did to get those things, it’s such an overlooked thing. And often I think that those byproducts are actually what keeps us coming back over and over.

So imagine your goal is to become a consistent three times a week runner by, I don’t know, the summer. Let’s not even say March, let’s say by the summer you’re going to be running three times a week. You created a whole plan and you stuck to it, like maybe 70% of the time. Because remember, perfection is never the goal here, right? We’re just working on progress.

So you stuck to it 70% of the time and then in June, July, and August, bam, you ran three times a week and you feel amazing. So the byproduct of that work isn’t just the change in your fitness level. It’s learning that yeah, you’re actually kind of a badass that can set goals and commit to them and do them. That you can do really hard things and come through on the other side.

Another byproduct are the systems that you created for yourself that helped you achieve this goal. And now you can take those systems and apply them to other things. It’s the improved relationship with yourself that now you can depend on yourself to follow through. You’ve literally created evidence for yourself that you are somebody who says, “This is a thing I’m going to do,” and then you fucking do it, right?

It’s the example that you’re setting for your kids. It’s like the new friends that you made while you started running. There’s so many strategic byproducts that come from setting a goal like becoming a consistent runner. And we tend to like sort of forget about those.

But if you spend time along the journey, not just looking at how close am I to achieving my goal, but what else has changed in my life? What is blooming around me as a result of me chasing this goal? That’s like just extra motivation, extra support for knowing that you are, like I said, you’re kind of a badass, okay?

So when you are struggling, when you’re like, “This thing that I set out to do is really hard,” I want you to look around for the byproducts. Not all success is obvious. Not all success is linear. We’re actually going to talk about that exact topic in next week’s podcast. But success is never a straight line.

And you’ve all seen those memes on Instagram where somebody writes a big squiggle, and they’re like, “This was my path to success.” And you can see, it’s like all over the place. So, what else are you getting out of your journey to achieve this goal? And make sure that you are recognizing all of the byproducts because your goal is really just the starting point for all kinds of goodness in your life.

Okay. All right, my friend, that’s it for 2021. Whoa, it’s been a wild ride. I cannot wait to see you next year. And also, don’t forget to sign up for that consistent exerciser online class that I’m teaching on January 4th. We are going to dive deeper into the concepts from this episode. And oh yeah, it’s free.

So just go to notyouraveragerunner.com/excuses to sign up. It’s also going to be recorded. So, again, if you can’t make it live, no worries, I will send you the recording later that day, but you have to be registered to get it.

So you’re just going to go to notyouraveragerunner.com/excuses to grab your spot. And again, that’s it for today. All right, Rebels. I hope this has been a very helpful episode for you. If you liked it, please share it on Instagram, let people know. I love you. Stay safe and get your ass out there and run.

Oh, and one last thing, if you enjoyed listening to this episode you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30 day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.