Top Ways You Can Push Yourself In 2019

A New Year is once again upon us. This quote by Melody Beattie comes to mind; “The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.”

Yes, 2019 is going to be a great year for us all, and this year’s resolutions will be more than just a wish.

Making an annual list of New Year’s resolutions is a venerable tradition. By some accounts, it dates back to the ancient Romans, who customarily made a show of promising the god Janus that they would behave better over the next 12 months than they had in the past year. But while Janus was the patron deity of new beginnings, hence why January starts off our year, he also provided a convenient excuse. If a citizen of Rome didn’t actually follow through with his various self-improvement vows, he could always shrug it off by explaining that it was Janus’ will. Then, presumably, he could just go on gorging himself at banquets or betting excessively on gladiator fights.

Sounds familiar? Have you been shrugging off your new year’s resolutions too? Throwing away each years clean slate and prime opportunity for personal growth?  Me too. Lets talk about some ways we can push ourselves to achieve the goals we set for ourselves in 2019.

Make Your Bed Every Morning

Excuses are easy, but when it comes right down to it, it’s also easy to make your bed each morning. If you make your bed in the morning, that means you’re telling yourself that you won’t be getting back into it for the rest of the day. The day has begun and you will conquer any and all tasks before you, starting with making that bed. It might be a small accomplishment, but making the bed sets the tone for the entire day.

In a 2014 commencement speech at University of Texas at Austin, Admiral McRaven said: “If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. “By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.”

Sometimes being an adult is hard. Sometimes going into work every day is hard. Sometimes, I come home from the office and question if I accomplished anything at all. But at least I made my bed! Starting every day off with a mini victory can do a tremendous amount for your psyche.

Start a Morning Run Streak

Running in the mornings helps you to remove yourself from the daily challenges of life and gives you time to focus on the bigger picture. Running is great, but streak running is a whole different animal. Streak running creates a psychological bond to the act of running and ‘maintaining the streak.’ Once you cross 50, 100 or 1,000 days straight of any activity, you are much less likely to decide that today is the day you are going to quit. But what happens when you do end the streak? Start over and try to beat the last streak.

Plan to Prepare

We often miss opportunities to be our best and make the most of our time with others because we didn’t find time to prepare. Granted, most of us  are pretty good at winging it, but we can be much more effective when we deliberately set aside time to prepare for our next goal, accomplishment or achievement. It’s not easy to find extra time in the day, so rather than hoping you’ll find the time you need when you need it, block in the time you want for prep on your calendar.

Schedule 15 minutes to review objectives. Block an hour immediately when the motivation to grow hits you just to clear your mind and rehearse. Carve out as many hours as you need to create and practice the plan.

Stop Making Excuses

If you are looking for a reason not to do the thing you should do, you will surely find it. Part of taking ownership of your life and reflecting how you got to an unhappy state is to understand how you are enabling your poor decisions. It is usually with excuses, like you’re tired, or you don’t have time when you’re not making time, you will do it tomorrow, etc. Stop making excuses, and start owning your life and pushing yourself to do the work.

Happiness doesn’t fall into your lap, it takes work like everything else. So get out of your own way and stop making excuses.

You Are Not a Victim

You are not a victim of every whim and circumstance, and you do have some control over your life at any given time. It is about how you wield that control that determines whether you can change your life. Stop resisting responsibility for your life, because the sooner you take ownership of it and stop blaming others, you will have more autonomy and you will start making progress.

At the end of the day we are accountable to ourselves , our success and failures is a result of what we do. Blaming, whining, deflecting accountability, risk aversion, and resistance to change are symptoms of the adversity-beaten individual. Uncontrollably bad things happen to all of us all the time, but we can control how we react to them.  When we fully commit to having responsibility in any process, we begin to integrate external tactical support and our own internal capabilities, and develop a sense of control for the results.