Finishing Strong!

It has already been two weeks since New Year’s Day and many people have already started to steadily stray form those ever so popular resolutions. In essence, a resolution is a goal or commitment one makes to themselves to reform a current habit. Sadly enough, most people by the two-week point have already parted ways with the commitments/goals they have set out for. They have either chosen to be satisfied by settling for less (just finishing) or quit all together. They are not finishing strong! Why?

First of all, the most important thing about goals is having one! But what does it mean to have a goal and what is it that makes people stay on track? There are two things that are REQUIRED if you are looking to maintain your commitment: effort and attitude. In a recent study psychologist stated that 78% of the people who failed in there resolutions focused on the downside of not achieving there goals or the things in which they would be “deprived” of if they wanted to reach it. Basically, the attitude was not sufficient enough to allow them to put forth the required effort. These people are looking at the immediate discomforts and do not realize that they should be irrelevant and outweighed by the long-term benefits.

Again, this all comes down to how you choose to look at what it will take to finish strong. The last of human freedoms, to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance, is to choose one’s own way (Frankl). Your attitude is what is stopping you from even finishing, and to finish strong you must first finish. By embracing this attitude of finishing strong you set a level of personal accountability. Don’t be part of the group who HAVE to go on a diet or start a workout, be the one who CHOOSES to make the commitment.