Be Well, Live Well – Part 3

Kristina Schmitt
Jul 21
2 min read

Be Practical: You Don’t Need a 5AM Wakeup to Win at Wellness

How to create sustainable change without burning out

Wellness is made up of physical, spiritual, and mental components between which we will need to alternate our focus during different seasons of our lives. Focusing on just one will get us stuck. As the third installment to our wellness series, this article will focus on the practical application: How do we make and sustain change?

steps in nature, slow progress, path forward, small habit change

Many times when people want to make a change, they will set a large goal that requires them to make a sweeping change. For example, going from not working out at all to getting up at 5AM and exercising five times per week. After a few days, or perhaps even weeks, their body is sore, they are tired, and they need a break. They decide to skip a day and now they feel like they’ve failed in their goal.

The issue isn’t that they can’t do the goal, it’s that they set their goal too far away from their current state. When we want to make sustainable changes, we need to break down our goals into smaller steps that are within reach. In the case of our 5AM exerciser, to start, they could have set a goal to exercise one day per week. Once that became easier, they could add another day or two.

Being a successful goal-setter isn’t about how large of a goal you achieve; it’s about achieving the goals that you set. Starting small leads to big changes. If you think of your New Years Resolution as more of a long-term goal rather than a sudden change that you make on January 1st, the

n the likelihood of success will increase.

From our example, our New Year’s Resolution will be,

“By December 31st 2024, I will be exercising at 5am five times per week.”

Next, we create small mini goals. In January we will start getting up at 5am one day per week. In February, we will start exercising on that day. In March, we’ll start getting up early and exercising two days per week and so on.

Often other things such as going to bed too late or not prioritizing your schedule act as barriers to achieving our goals. It is helpful to note what is getting in your way and to set mini goals to overcome them as well.

It may seem to take longer to get from where you are today to where you want to be, but when the goal is to create a sustainable habit, starting small allows your body to adapt more easily.

Change your mindset: New Years Resolutions are not about the change that you make on January 1st, it’s about the change that you make throughout the year.