Ep.20 New Year Better Me

Ep.20 New Year Better Me

[00:00:00] Intro
 
Hey guys welcome to Growth on the Daily, the personal development podcast for athletes. My name is Rey and I'm your host. I'm a former competitive hockey player. I'm passionate about self-growth, and I'm here to support you on your journey to becoming the best version of you as I become the best version of me.

Thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. First of all, happy New Year. I hope you guys had a wonderful holiday season. So I'm here with this episode titled New Year Better Me because guys, we are focused on becoming the best version of ourselves. Keep on listening if you're looking for inspiration on how to work on yourself, realize sustainable success and become a better version of you.

[00:00:54] No Cap All Facts
 
Studies show that 91% of us won't achieve our New Year's resolutions. Now that's kind of disappointing and probably not the motivation you thought you would get from this episode, but honestly, it's a reality check. So many of us are setting New Year's resolutions. We're setting goals, we're feeling that reset time. But it just doesn't stick.

So why does this happen? Because I believe deep down that we want it, we want success, right? That's why we set goals. That's why we're constantly working on ourselves. I did a little research to figure out is there some sort of commonality here? Why are so many people just throwing away their New Year's resolutions?

Top three reasons that came from Forbes says the following. The first is that you haven't healed from your past in order to change your behavior in the future. And I think there's a lot of philosophical sentiment that comes with this. And it's really around the fact that our past not only impacts our present, but impacts our future.

And until we're able to get past that, ironically, you can't really proceed in a direction of growth because eventually what goes around comes around. And that includes your past. The second reason that was mentioned is that you don't have an accountability structure to help you sustain change. The good news for you guys is we have the Growth on the Daily podcast, and this is a community.

So as I'm going after my goals and I'm showcasing to you guys how I go about that, you guys should also be sharing the same with the rest of this community, right? Let me know what you guys are working on. What are you striving to become in the future? What are your goals? How can the Growth on the Daily podcast help you? Let's have that conversation and keep each other accountable. 

And finally it says you're actually scared of and completely resistant to achieving this big goal, and you won't let yourself do it. And I think that's a big element because I know we talked about in past episodes the fear of failure and a lot of times we're actually driven to success because of this fear.
And so, that can actually not only motivate us, but the other way around, inhibit our success. So how do we strike that balance between having an element of fear that's used to inspire us rather than knock us down? 

So with that in mind, let's just take a pause and talk about how we go about New Year Better Me.

[00:03:28] Reflection

So the first step is looking back. We need to look back on 2022, and that is how we solve one of the reasons for not realizing your New Year's resolutions, which is not getting over your past. And so that's why we need to look back. So feel free to look even further than 2022. 

But what I did was. I took some time. I put in my headphones, I put on some like calm Spotify playlist, and I really thought about my year and how it went. So I asked myself questions like, how did my year go? What did I accomplish? Where did I fail? What are things that I overcame? What worked, what didn't, what would I change? And also how do I compare to last year?

So those are some questions that I asked myself, and really the goal was to understand my story, and understand me, right? Because it's hard to figure out where you want to go if you don't know where you are, and you don't know where you've come from. 

[00:04:28] Discover Yourself

The second step is discovering who you want to become. And this is where you're setting goals that actually align to who you want to become. So it's very values-based. I know in a very early episode of the podcast, we talked about understanding who you are, setting your values, and you can go back to those previous episodes in the archives. But that is a very important element to discovering who you want to become. 

So for me to do this, this was another sit down session and I asked myself questions like, what do I want to experience this year? What do I want to leave behind and how do I want people to describe me? Those are high level questions and it takes a lot of cognition to get to those answers. Honestly, I won't even lie. I probably stared at my journal for a good couple minutes before I wrote anything down and I wasn't really looking for a right answer.

And I think that's really a key theme in this is that you're not just going to think for a second and produce everything you need to, that's going to a hundred percent help you accomplish your goals. There's going to be a lot of fluff there. It's a lot of iteration, so take it as a learning process. 
Once you have some sort of idea overarching of who you want to become, maybe oh, I want to experience new places. So that's actually something that's on my personal list is discovering new places. But it's what does that actually mean, right? So for me, that means traveling. 

It also means new restaurants. It also means understanding where I live. You know, there's always hidden gems and things you, you don't really know that are right in your backyard. I'm making it a point, at least for me personally, to go check those out and discover new places. 

So hopefully you guys have some things on your list that's just high level answering those questions. 

[00:06:16] Goal Setting and Tracking Progress

And then the final step that we want to take a look at is actually building this plan, right?
We know where we are, we know where we were, and we know sort of ish kind of where we want to go. It's like a blurry picture, but now it's kind of clearing up that picture by developing a path to that endpoint. So let's unblur the picture here. And that's goal setting. 

Now, goal setting is talked about all the time. I know you've heard of SMART Goals. If you've not heard of the term SMART Goals before, I want to know how you live your life because it is literally everywhere. If you Google goal setting, every article, every blog post, every podcast, every YouTube video talks about SMART goals.

But I'll still give you a refresher because there is value into knowing them. The idea behind SMART Goals is actually setting goals that have a higher potential of being realized. How do you do that? That's where your acronym for SMART comes in, setting specific goals, so adding detail into what that goal means. They're measurable, adding some sort of quantity. It's actually attainable or achievable, so it's a feasible goal. You're also realizing what realizing success looks like and so how do you know you've got to that goal? Then time based is when do you want to achieve the goal by?

So good elements to that, but some goals in my opinion at least, don't necessarily fit that framework. So I use that in the back of my head as okay, make sure you're keeping this in mind as you're setting your goals. But I like to have sort of high level topics. And then with the high level topics, I have sub goals.

So I'll share with you one of my high level goals. This year I have five, but I'll share with you one of them. And one of those goals is prioritizing my health. So prioritizing my health is my high level goal, but there's sub goals that help me achieve that high level goal that basically tell me that by doing these sub goals, I know I'm prioritizing my health.

So one of those things is eating nutritious foods and I made that more specific. I said eating nutritiously 80% of the time and simply for pleasure 20% of the time. And that's sort of that balanced, nutritious lifestyle. Another thing I put in there is moving my body in a way I love five days a week, so that might be lifting weights three days a week and Muay Thai or some form of other cardio twice a week.

I also put things like sleeping seven hours a night, drinking two liters of water a day. Things like that. All elements of prioritizing my health. They're very specific, they're measurable, they're actionable, and they're not necessarily time-based if they're ongoing. But if there's an end time, there's there's a date on there.

So for example, I'm going to be traveling in the spring and I have a fat loss goal. Now the fat loss goal, I won't be able to achieve by the time I leave in the spring, but I can make progress until then and pick up where I left off when I'm back. And so I have a goal of where I want to be with my fat loss by the time I leave, and that date is described in that goal.

So those are just some ways that you can be super specific with your goal setting, but it goes beyond goal setting. Goal setting is great, right? You have that on paper. Maybe it's in a journal, maybe it's just on a sticky note. Maybe it's in the notes app on your phone. For me, it's on the notes app in my phone.
But it goes further than that. You actually have to track your progress because. Most of the time we write the goal and we never look at it. We think about it, but we never look at it again. One habit that I really want to build is looking at my goals every single day. It's actually something I learned from Grant Cardone.

Grant Cardone is, well, he's a man of many talents. He's a very wealthy man. Lots of real estate, self-made entrepreneur. You might see him all over the internet, but he has a book. I didn't read it, but I just see so many ads for it that I know this by now. And it's simply talking about having a list of goals that you constantly look at.

I believe he has a list that's on paper and he writes it down at as soon as he wakes up and his next to his bed every day. That's great. That's very influencer for me and I'm not an influencer. So what I'm trying to do instead is the best thing that works for me, and that's having a list on my phone with my goals and really just taking a look at it, but maybe setting reminders to go back to my goals.
So maybe every month have a monthly recurring reminder that says, Hey, take a look at your goals. And then you really start to get that why again, and understand not only why you set them in the first place, but why you should keep going. 

And then we have the tracking progress element. So you have your reminder of your goals, but how do you know you're actually actively working towards them? You know how I mentioned that I have sub goals under my high level goals. When I have that, I track doing those habits every single day or every week or every month, whatever the cadence is.

So that, you know by doing those continuously ongoing, you're continuing in my case to prioritize my health. So that's the element of tracking progress. Now, how do you actually go about tracking progress? There's many ways you can do this. You can look to habit tracker apps. You can do it in a journal. You can just reflect before bed and say, Hey, what did I do today? You can even do it in the morning and say, what am I going to do today? 

There's a lot of ways of doing that. Maybe have mini milestones like I want to achieve X by this date, and maybe that's a halfway point for your goal. Maybe it's a quarter of the way through. The point is tracking your progress. 

So those three elements, looking back on 2022 and years beyond that, discovering who you want to become in the future, and finally building that plan to realize that better you are the elements of setting up your New Year's resolutions for success.

[00:11:58] Hold the Mic
 
A quick pause for a minute. Take a second and head over to Instagram and type in Growth on the Daily and hit that follow button. I really want to grow the Growth on the Daily community. The Growth on Daily community is a great system for us, not only to showcase our successes, but to inspire each other to motivate each other and of course, hold ourselves accountable. So go on head on Instagram and follow us @growthonthedaily and as well, share it with your friends.

[00:12:26] Meaningful Mentions
 
To wrap up this week's episode, I have three key takeaways. The first is reflect on your past. Guys we know we can't go forward and pursue success if we haven't healed from our past, and also just understood how we got to where we are today. And so that reflection process is crucial. 
Secondly, design your future. Think about who you want to become, where you want to be in life, what you want to experience in life in order for you to have some sort of destination, because if you aim at nothing, you will hit nothing. So we need to aim at something. And it's okay if it's the wrong thing because you can always change your target. 

And then finally, live your best life. Live a life that's going to help you pursue where you are trying to go to hit that target, but really do it in a way that's going to allow you to enjoy your life. Your growth journey doesn't have to be miserable, grind all the time. It should come out of laughter, smiles, cries, happiness, experience, joy, all of those things. And if you're missing those elements, see where you can incorporate them, because this is not a short-term process, right? Guys, we're focused on sustainable growth. So we're focused on longevity.

[00:13:44] Quality Quote

To further inspire you guys this week, I have a quote for you that says, "the best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today". So I invite you guys to do whatever it is you need to do today to set yourself up for success for tomorrow, and continue that process going forward throughout the year.

[00:13:59] Outro

 That wraps up this week's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, and for those of you who are new, welcome to the Growth on the Daily community. Thank you guys. I commend you guys for committing to learn, grow, and thrive. I hope you guys have a phenomenal new year. I'm excited to see what's to come from this podcast and from you guys throughout the year.
So let's stay in contact. Follow us once again on Instagram @growthonthedaily to stay up to date with the show. And of course, check out our website growthonthedaily.com for more info. Thanks guys, and I'll see you next week.