Alice Rhodes

One of my new years resolutions was to start going on a bike ride once a week. Today I woke up to drizzly, grey, British January Weather and quite frankly I looked outside and thought to myself "Nope, I'm not going out in that". So that was it; I sat on the couch and ate my breakfast whilst watching trashy TV, having already broken/given up my New Year goal. I'd let myself down- because of a bit of rain.

Then I remembered something a You Tuber had said in her  New Year resolutions video, this year she planned on working on a 'no rain, no flowers' attitude. It's easy to let an inconvenience seem worse than it is and ruin your plan and in my case, set back a goal. Rather than allowing a problem to stop your plans or goal you need to shift the focus on how to overcome it. After all, flowers wont grow without a little rain. In my case I could either stay sat on my bum all day long or I could put my work out gear on and get out on my bike in the miserable weather. So I got up, got ready and went out! I didn't allow the bad weather to ruin my plans and I looked on the bright side of the situation. 

With this early bump in the road, I've realised achieving my 2018 goals will be slightly harder than anticipated and, although I pride myself on my will power, it is going to take a lot of hard work and determination to complete all the goals I've set. I imagine some of you are also struggling with your New Year goal, maybe it's getting fit or learning a skill, so here's some ways I'm making easier to achieve my goal:

1. I'm an organisation freak so I've chosen Thursday to be my designated  bike ride day, mainly because it's a good day for me to fit things in. You might live your life a bit more spontaneously and not have set things/routines but I believe having a set routine should hopefully help me stick at the goal for a lot longer because it will become natural to wake up ready for a bike ride e.g. my little brain will go "oh it's Thursday, time to ride my bike and get fit". If you just plan to pick the nicest day or the most convenient day each week, I think you'll end up skipping a lot more weeks that planned (unless you have the best self control EVER)

2. Don't be unrealistic. You wont become the worlds best amateur chef in one week, no matter how many Jamie Oliver books you read. In my case, I'm not expecting to be able to do a twenty mile bike ride in a months time. I'm going to take baby steps and improve on my stamina and general fitness over the year and years to come so that I don't hurt my body on the third bike ride, consequently putting me off riding my bike again. 

3. Record your achievements and improvements. I'm personally going to be doing posts on how I'm getting on with each of my goals throughout the year, it might be monthly or weekly but I know if I'm not feeling motivated or preparing to give up, being able to look back at what I've already done and documenting/writing about why I'm so close to giving up on my goal will help motivate me to carry on. You could take photos, keep a diary or use social media to track your progression, whether its loosing that post Christmas tummy or learning new crafts there's loads of ways to document what you've already done to give you a little motivation on down days.

That's three ways I'll be keeping going with my 2018 goal, check out my last post to find out more about my 2018 goals, click the links to my social medias for more frequent updates on how I'm getting on with them and other fun things. Leave me a comment if you enjoyed the post, I'd love to know your New Year goals!