With the arrival of the new year, many people view this as the ideal time to figure out the changes they’d like to make in themselves as part of a new year, new you mentality.
Instead of making huge, sweeping goals, Tracey Marchese, a professor of practice in the School of Social Work in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, says focus on a few small, implementable changes.
Tracey Marchese
Marchese, a licensed clinical social worker, is a big proponent of the benefits of small tweaks leading to sustainable change when it comes to successfully following through on resolutions.
“If you are looking to who you want to be, that’s great, but you need to consider who you are and where you are,” says Marchese, whose research explores mind-body wellness. “Realize that you’re a work in progress who is going to be a work in progress your entire life.”
The challenge is not to compare ourselves to others and accept who we are right now. Marchese encourages people to figure out “what you would want to change about yourself and how can you begin that change?”
On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Marchese offers tips and best practices for sticking to those New Year’s Resolutions, provides tips to help achieve the change you want to see and examines how mental health and well-being impacts overall well-being.
Check out episode 173 of the “’Cuse Conversations” podcast featuring Marchese. A transcript [PDF] is also available.
A lot of us enter the new year with high expectations, and oftentimes we’re setting ourselves up for failure. It’s really the small changes that are more attainable.
There’s an old saying that says three weeks is a habit. Many people have weight loss goals. Instead of saying ‘I need to lose this much weight by this time,’ what about my eating could I change? And it can’t be I need to restrict everything that I eat. Let me start with one thing I am going to change. Perhaps it’s what I have for breakfast. Let me focus on that for three weeks or a month, changing the types of food I’m eating and not necessarily the amount of food I’m eating. Maybe it’s snacking throughout the day. What snacks can I change up instead of just trying to diet?
Being able to set smaller, more attainable goals and then tweak the goal moving forward leads to more satisfaction, and a greater ability to feel proud of an accomplishment because you set a smaller goal instead of this long-term, unattainable goal.
Because everything is electronic, we can constantly be tracking our goals, and sometimes trackers can be extremely helpful. Other times, they can be harmful. If people are looking at their fitness tracker and thinking they’re a failure because they didn’t get in their 10,000 steps today, that’s not going to be helpful because all it will do is serve to defeat you. What are the things that can serve to motivate you versus defeat you?
Having a buddy, someone to work on your goals with, is great. It helps keep you accountable and it makes pursuing your goals more fun. Journaling can be super helpful if it’s done in the right context of tracking your progress.
But you need to cut yourself some slack because there are going to be days where you aren’t able to work on your goals because you weren’t feeling well. And that’s okay.
Self-care can show up in a lot of different ways. Do you feed yourself nutritious food? Do you have a regular sleep routine? Do you exercise your body if you’re able to do so? When we talk about holistic health, there are five parts that make us whole: our physical, mental, social, emotional and spiritual parts of self. When there’s a disruption or a problem in one area, it’s going to permeate all of those other areas.
When it comes to the social piece, do you make time to call or spend time with the people that you care about? Do you do things in your life that give you meaning and purpose? Can you find a work-life balance? For a lot of folks, that’s hard, but not all of this has to be on you. In workplace settings, could we have shared care or communal care that’s going to help everyone’s wellbeing?
Yes, there are ways that we’re responsible for our self-care, but there are also ways our friends, the agencies and organizations that we work for and our communities can help with our self-care too.
