You come to this blog to learn ways to make yourself healthier by practicing Yoga and Meditation techniques. But that is not useful if you are not disciplined enough to apply the methods you learn, integrate yoga and meditation in your fitness regime, and push yourself to learn newer Asanas and methods as you keep getting better.
Every year we come up with New Year's Resolutions. We write them down with hopes of making our lives better. But most of us never stick to our resolutions for more than a few weeks.
Why don’t we follow through with our own plans? Why are we so prone to procrastination and how can we make ourselves do what's best for us. Let us investigate these questions and deduce ways to stick to our new year resolutions.
Why do resolutions fail?
In ancient Greek literature, the tendency of a person to act against one’s better judgment is called “Akrasia”. We all are familiar with indulging in Akrasia. You might call it procrastination or distraction.
If you have a very high level of self-discipline, it should be easy for you to stick to your new year's resolution. But the fact is most of us are not good at that. So you have to find ways to make yourself do what you need to do but don’t want to do when it’s finally time for some action.
But the problem is not with you. It is human nature to want to choose short-term gratification over long-term rewards. The problem is with how you approach new year resolutions.
An alternative to resolutions
Instead of setting vague new year resolutions like “get in shape” or “lose weight”, your new year resolutions must include things you can do daily and keep track of. And once your resolution turns into a habit, you won’t have to conjure up will power every day to do that activity.
If your new year's resolution is to develop a meditation habit, then you have to meditate daily starting from 5 minutes a day, and keep increasing as you go until it becomes a habit.
As a child, brushing your teeth wasn’t something you wanted to do. But your parents made you do it until it became a habit and then you don’t even need the willpower to do it every day.
Beating Procrastination
If your new year's resolution is to develop a running habit, you need to go out every morning (or evening) and run. It’s simple but not easy because there are forces of distraction that are working to lower your will power. You might be lured by the comfort of your bed and not want to go out in the cold.
In these kinds of difficult situations when you’re likely to procrastinate, the best thing you can do is to take the smallest possible action to begin your activity. Don’t tell yourself you are going to go for a run, tell yourself you’re just going to wear your running shoes and warm up a little. It will make you more likely to go on a run.
You’re trying to make yourself do the thing you want to. But you know you are not going to do it so you have to trick yourself into it.
We hope this new year, you’re going to crush procrastination and use the ideas we shared with you in this post to develop habits and fulfil your new year's resolutions.
Happy New Year everyone!