We here at the Mullin Group are excited about the New Year and if you are anything like us, you may find it hard to stick to your New Years Resolutions, especially if it includes fitness.

With good intentions, we start the year wanting to be healthier and more productive than the previous year but many of us lose our enthusiasm and our drive dwindles as we realize that we can’t change everything overnight.

Do not give up, you can do it, you just may need to adjust your approach. Adjust your attitude, change your lifestyle and come up with a plan for success.

Adjust Your Attitude

If you have the wrong attitude about fitness, you are already setting yourself up for failure. Most people look at exercise as:

1. Punishment for bad eating.
2. An obligation.
3. Painful.
4. Time consuming.
5. Impossible to sustain over a long period of time.
6. Boring.

If this is how you look at things it will not be long before you do not carry through. Take some time to think about your attitude towards exercise and decide whether these attitudes are true or just lies you have been telling yourself over the years. Try a different perspective and look at exercise as:

1. A break from a stressful workday.
2. A way to boost energy and mood.
3. The only time you will have to yourself all day.
4. A chance to get totally physical and let your mind rest.
5. A chance to reward your body for working so hard.
6. A way to improve your quality of life immediately.

And here are some more key points about exercise that you must understand:

1. Willpower will not work. Willpower is for short-term success. Long-term success requires planning, discipline and finding ways to motivate yourself every day.

Motivation takes work, it does not just happen. What motivates you will change from day to day. You have to recommit to your goals each day, tweak them to fit changes in your lifestyle and attitude and find new ways to motivate yourself over the course of your life.

1. You will not always want to exercise and eat healthy. Even the most committed exerciser doesn’t always want to do it. Know that you will have to work on it every day.
2. Diets don’t work. Stop wasting your time following someone else’s plan for you. Make your own plan based on realistic changes — if you can not follow your chosen diet for the rest of your life, you are wasting precious time. Think of it as an investment to your well being, you are worth it!

Your next step is to adjust your lifestyle so you have the best chance of success.