New Year’s Resolutions -The Truth About Overcommitment
The truth about overcommitment is glossed over among the holiday bells and Santa beards, but the negative outcome is quite serious.
Overcommitment is especially prevalent with New Year’s Resolutions. It’s a beginner mistake that can be handled easily if you take a moment to understand what it is and why it doesn’t work.
You have good intentions when you’re starting a fitness program or plan. But it turns out good intentions aren’t enough to succeed. And you feel like this guy…
This is you walking into the gym on January 1st ready to seize the day.
You not only walk in to the gym and commit to an hour training session for six days a week but you also declare you’re throwing out all the “bad food” in your house.
A cleanse sounds like a great idea, too. You may even buy a ton of vegetables and pony up for a juicer.
You overcommit on everything. You all of a sudden go from the couch to super human in one week.
You might even accomplish this for a week or two, but then…
The Unanticipated Car Crash
Life jumps in front of your brand new eco friendly Prius and you crash into a tree. All your resolutions and health commitments fall to the wayside.
Your Prius didn’t have enough energy to sustain you. Your willpower tank completely ran out.
Then you go back to your old ways and the gym membership becomes a ghost that haunts you every Christmas.
Why does this happen?
Our willpower is finite, just like gas in a car. Every mile, or in this case decision you make, takes some of your willpower gas away.
If you make too many changes all at once you’ll drain your willpower really fast. Then you’re left with nothing to show for all your hard work.
I have a solution for you. It has worked 100% of the time when I use this with my clients.
Not many things in life are a sure thing. Take advantage of this skill and practice it.
Lift Life Fitness strongly dislikes drastic changes because they rarely work and overwhelm us faster than you can say, “Snickel-fritz.”
So how do we make changes?
Habit formation. It takes anywhere between two weeks and one month to form a habit depending on what study you read.
In my own experience, it always depends. Two weeks is a great place to start though.
This is why our coaches check in with all of our clients every two weeks here at Lift Life. And it works really well for us!
Step One – End Overcommitment
The smallest step is sometimes the biggest. What I’m about to tell you might sound like it’s not enough, but if you don’t take this this step seriously, you will crash and burn.
When you start out you can only pick one or two habits at a time. If you pick more than two, it will start to drain your willpower and overwhelm you, and failure will come knocking on your door.
Step Two – Detail
Let’s use starting to exercise as an example. “I’m going to exercise a couple days every week in the New Year.”
Warning! That’s not detailed enough. Dig deeper!
“In the New Year I’m going to the gym 5 miles away on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
Good enough now?
Nope, not enough.
Write something more like this: “I’m going to the gym 5 miles away on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6pm and working out for ten minutes.”
Now you designated the time, place, action—and you wrote it out.
Now you’re getting somewhere! But don’t forget—the more detailed your goal is, the better. Set yourself up to succeed.
Step Three – Rate the Difficulty
After you write down exactly what you’re going to do, you have to determine how difficult it will be. This is a self-check system that works miracles.
When you’re planning out your new habit you have to ask yourself, “On a scale of 1-10, how confident do I feel that I can achieve this habit?”
If you are anything less than a 9 or 10, you have to go back to step two and make the habit so easily achievable that you are 10/10 confident.
This step is the most important because it sets you up for success.
The Three Step Overcommitment Solution
Let me show you exactly how this works in this video.
Bonus Habit Helper
I like to triple check myself and make sure I follow through with things. These are a few extra steps you can take.
Try making a pact with a friend. Or try a healthy bet. These are two great ways to follow through with your new habit.
Also try adding in a daily check-in text from a friend or family member.
If you use all of these steps and try the bonus steps you are on the path to your new fit and confident self.
Lift Life!
– Coach Z
