It’s the beginning of February and I just wanted to offer a moment for each of you to self-reflect. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to see how each of you are doing with your new year’s resolutions.

How are your resolutions going?  Are you still going strong? Did you let yourself slip up?

It’s about that time that people really begin to feel guilty because they’ve fallen off the wagon with their resolutions for the new year. They haven’t lived up to their own expectations. They’ve maybe started off the new year with a workout routine and got sore and tired and decided to hit that snooze button on their alarm.

I know that all too well –– and you start having this thing I like to call the “January blues.”I believe the January blues come because you’re in the winter months. You’re not out and about getting vitamin D from the sun a lot of the time. Well, unless you live in Austin where the weather is mild in the winter and often times is 70 degrees and sunny. But that’s beside the point.

You had high expectations at the beginning of the brand-new year and had a much more positive outlook on the future versus today where you feel as if you let yourself down. You feel like you broke a commitment or a promise to yourself and that can put you in a downward spiral. It happens to a lot of people.

And ultimately, it makes you begin questioning why you were thinking of even pursuing some of your goals or resolutions.

Be cognizant when you catch yourself falling into this trap of a script. You know, where you say I’ll try again next time or I’m a failure or I don’t know why I set that goal because I was never going to achieve it.

The reality is that life presents us with a lot of challenges and tests. I know when I was trying to get back into better physical shape, my body just kept getting injured. It kept becoming incredibly sore. I wouldn’t sleep at night. I was really struggling. And I honestly believe that was my body saying that it wanted to keep up its habit of being a couch potato and not eating well. It didn’t want to be working out because it hadn’t been trained to do that in recent times.

We don’t want to be doing this other stuff and we don’t want to be trying to go and become a better physical version of ourselves. Because it’s hard. So, we are presented with barriers and roadblocks that make it easy to succumb to.I want to make sure that you’re aware that you should never feel as if you failed or that you suck. Do not feel like you’re a failure. Get back up and push for whatever your goals are.

Just because the date on the calendar says we are a month into the year, and you’ve fallen behind expectations doesn’t mean that your year can’t begin again right now. Time is relative, and you still have plenty of time to make this calendar year a success.

You can make that conscious change to get to the gym every day like you wanted. Or to come home early from the office to spend more time with your family, kids, or friends. Whatever that goal or aspiration was for yourself doesn’t mean that you are a failure. It just means that you didn’t quite live up to delivering on those items up to now.

Double down your efforts, refocus yourself and figure out how to get yourself back in the game. Commit to taking smaller steps to get yourself where you want to go. Get back on that horse and start riding. So, just a little bit of encouragement because I know that there are some of you out there that are struggling with your new year’s resolutions. Don’t give up because when you give up, you’re giving up on yourself and are admitting defeat.

Whatever it is that you want to accomplish isn’t going to be easy. That’s why you set it as a goal in the first place. It’s something that you want to accomplish. Don’t be disappointed in yourself. Be motivated to reframe your focus and motivate yourself to do things a bit differently.

I’d love to hear what you think. I just wanted to offer some words of encouragement for each and every one of you that are reading this. If you’re struggling or are needing an extra kick in the pants, contact me at steve@ripplecentral.com. 

As always, Ripple On!!!!

ICYMI: Just Around The Bend