THE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO REALIZING YOUR 2021 HEALTH & WELLNESS GOALS

This year has been challenging which means there’s all the more reason to ensure you make the most of the coming year. Many of 2020’s New Year’s resolutions started strong, but with the weight of a global pandemic and political unrest, many goals felt less and less important.
This year, more than ever, it’s important to set goals that are valuable to you and protect your overall wellness. That’s why we’ve created this guide to help you design a resolution and a plan to accomplish it that ensures you come out of 2021 accomplishing exactly what you intended.
Step 1: Pick the right resolution
Dream big. You know what you want to achieve, so start by picking something that’s really meaningful to you. Resist the urge to tell yourself what is or isn’t possible or to choose a goal that’s based on what society or someone else is telling you. Go for your goal.
Step 2: Make your vision a SMART goal
Once you have your resolution in mind, it’s important to break this down into one or more SMART goals developed by George Doran. Here’s what that means:
S-Specific. “Be healthier” is a great goal, but it’s not very specific. Get into the nitty gritty of what being healthy means. Does it mean practicing meditation every day? Or maybe it means getting your daily serving of fruits and vegetables? Whatever that looks like to you, get specific about it.
M-Measurable. Saying you want to save money is not a goal you can measure. But saying you’d like to save $500 a month creates a quantifiable goal with a clear finish line.
A-Achievable. Absolutely set goals that make you stretch; Goals that seem out of your reach will make you work harder than ever to achieve them. However, there’s a difference between a goal that feels impossible and a goal that is impossible. In other words, if your goal is to go to sleep at 9:00 every night, but you have to pick up your kid from their away games at 10:00 a couple nights a week, your goal is unachievable. Make sure to evaluate your goals for attainability.
R-Relevant. This comes back to your intention behind the goal. Is this something you really want to do? Is it going to be impactful for this time of your life? If your goal is irrelevant, it’s going to be challenging to stick with it.
T-Time bound. You know you want to accomplish this goal in a year, but you can take it another step further and break it into smaller chunks. For example, if your goal is to write a novel this year perhaps you could make a goal to have the first draft finished by July.
Step 4: Document your progress
Charts with stickers don’t have to be just for kids. When you document your progress, your accessibility accelerates because simply being accountable to yourself makes you accountable to someone. Figure out a system that works whether it be using a daily planner, typing an update in your phone, or a good-old-fashioned chart.
Step 5: Find help
Just because this goal is about you, it doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. Find a friend to train for that triathlon with you or ask your brother to check in with you to make sure you’re really journaling every day. Your support system could be the difference between completing or falling short at your goal.
Step 6: Get inspired
Staying on track for your goal may require more than a little motivation throughout the year. Regularly review stories about people who accomplished the goal you’re going for, create a vision board to keep your success tangible, or create check points throughout the year to keep you continually enthused about working towards your goal.
Step 7: Practice patience and forgiveness
Goal setting is never a license to shame or punish yourself for not accomplishing something. In fact, once you start guilting yourself for choosing to curl up with Netflix instead of working on your reading goal, you’re already losing at your goal of complete wellness. Being a human, rather than a robot, means you need time for human things. In fact, if you find that you need to readjust your goal, that’s allowed too. As long as you are still progressing, you’re still winning.
Whether or not your wellness goal is sleep related, good sleep improves health all over. Getting the right amount of sleep can create positive changes in your physical and mental well-being. Specifically, poor sleep increases your risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression. So no matter what your wellness goal is this year, sleep quality may make a difference in helping you achieve it.
Let us find the product that solves your sleep challenges. Whether it’s related to snoring, allergies, sleeping too hot, or overall comfort, we have an expansive list of solutions that could eradicate your issue. Our sales reps are ready to help match you with the answers to your problems so you can start sleeping well and achieving your goals.
- Andrew Doeling
Comments 0