Writer: Kristin Rondeau, Saje Regional Trainer for Eastern Canada
With 2016 in full swing, the tendency of a shift from the bright eyed and bushy tailed ‘go-getter’ attitudes of January 1 to the slow creep in of the winter blues and the couch potato comfort zone of February and beyond has fallen upon many of us. Why is it so easy to make a resolution, but so much tougher to keep a resolution?
Following through with our goals
It keeps us aligned with the idea of living our values. When we set goals, we are focusing on areas of our lives (both personal and professional) in which we want to achieve a desired result. If we have set a S.M.A.R.T goal, we know exactly what we are expecting, and we have the steps in place to help us achieve this desired outcome. When we follow through with something we set out to do, there is an immediate sense of “reward”. The more challenges we overcome, (examples might include time management, financial planning, etc) that keep us from following through on our goals, the stronger and more determined we become! This can create a wonderful and empowering sense of accomplishment in ourselves that keeps us moving the next time we come up against an obstacle.
Maintaining integrity
An impactful way that we can show up for ourselves and one another – this can be alternatively defined as “consistently making the right choices”. One way you could define integrity is to say that you are choosing to do the right thing, even when no one is looking or even when the choice to do so isn’t the easy one. When we are aligned with living in our highest self, it means that we choose to be honest and we choose to let our actions speak for who we are as people and why we believe in what we do. Maintaining integrity is vital to our wellness; it means that in many ways our lives become simple because we are not misspending our time and energy questioning our selves and our decisions. Integrity can directly affect our success in life – people want to learn from and grow with people they deem trust worthy and those with a high sense of self. Let’s strive to be those people!
Leveraging the help of a friend or coworker to keep us aligned with our wellness plan
It helps significantly increase our chances of success. The goal here is to intentionally build out our peer support system in order to powerfully impact behavioral change. In our Saje Nation, this can look like many different things: maybe this means enforcing healthy eating habits through a ‘lunch swap’ (you take turns bringing each other a homemade lunch to work), or you make a plan to walk home together at the end of your shift. This could look like committing to eating 1 full green meal every day, or collaborating to be “screen free” (off email/Netflix) by 9pm 3 nights per week, with a text to each other stating when you have ‘turned off’. The most important facet of the relationship with your wellness buddy is accountability – that you are able to help another person elevate their level of progress, which can be difficult to achieve as a solo effort. One of the added benefits of a wellness buddy is widening your network of support. You can directly impact the strength of your workplace relationships positively by encouraging and building camaraderie, helping to reduce levels of stress by fostering a “we’re in this together” mentality, and by simply promoting the value of living a wellness based, wholistic lifestyle.
Here’s to our collective health and well-being!