Hi there. Welcome to another episode of Reviving Vet Med. In today's episode we are going to be talking about a new approach to New Year's resolutions. So at the time of this episode recording and release, we are fast approaching the New Year. And of course it's normal this time of year to be thinking about our wishes, wants and goals for the upcoming. Year and very often that comes into play as a New Year's resolution.
So depending on your personality, specifically in how you respond to internal expectations, you might have some polarizing thoughts about New Year's resolutions and whether or not they have worked for you or whether or not you think they are even worth pursuing. In today's episode, we are going to talk about some different ways that you can approach your wishes.
Wants and goals for the New Year, whether it be in relation to your self-care or life in general. So I'm really excited to share some of these strategies with you. They've worked very well for me and I look forward to explaining them in more detail. So let's go ahead and get into the episode.
This is the reviving Vet Med podcast, and I'm your host, Doctor Marie Holowaychuck and my mission is to improve the mental health and well-being of veterinary professionals around the world. Statistically speaking, more than 1/3 of people set a New Year's resolution, but more than 80% of those resolutions will have failed by mid February.
So while it's good to think about the New year as an opportunity for a fresh start or a clean slate, it is really important to consider the different ways that self-care and other health promoting strategies can be introduced. So there are some different ways that we can go about doing this and I encourage you to consider as I'm talking you through these different ways.
What appeals to you most or more importantly, what excites you the most? What sounds like fun? What sounds like some? Thing that is really going to resonate with you, not just in the beginning of the year when we feel really excited about our goals and wishes, but throughout the year something that you can come back to and and keep going with.
So before I talk about, you know, different ways that we can approach these goals or wishes or things we want to accomplish is to 1st think about the idea of creating smart goals. So anytime that we create a goal, we want to make sure that we are describing it in the context of this smart acronym so smart stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. And So what that means is that when you create a goal for yourself, you would like it to be specific and that you can exactly know when you will have achieved it, that it will be measurable in some way. So not, you know, a nebulous goal like eat more healthy, but how will we actually know if we're eating more healthfully?
Attainable means that the goal is going to be something realistic for you, that you are going to be able to achieve this. So rather than now sleeping six hours per day, you would extend your sleep time per day by 30 minutes, or maybe one hour, but that you're not going to jump from six hours to 8 hours of sleep in one single day. Now making sure the goal is relevant means that this is important to you. This has relevance to you in some way that this is in alignment with other goals that you have set for yourself in your life, or that it is an alignment with your current lifestyle. So again, relevance to us as veterinary care providers is that we are finding ways to take care of our mental health.
To prioritize our self-care, to make sure that we are engaging in strategies that are going to cultivate our health and well-being.
And then last but not least, timely means that we have the opportunity to have a time limit on this or to know when this will or will not have been achieved. So that you can check in with yourself and you can know whether maybe this is a goal that you decide that you want to let go of or is this something that you want to continue to pursue in the future.
So once you have a clear understanding of what smart goals are, and perhaps what are some smart goals that you might create for yourself, one strategy is to have a list of these goals or things that you want to accomplish during the year and a fun way to gamify this is to set the number of goals for the year according to the year.
So last year I had a list of 22 goals for 2022. This year I will have a list of 23 goals for 2023 and you might say to yourself, Oh my gosh, 23 goals like, are you insane? This sounds like a lot. I don't know that I could come up with those many goals. And when I say gamify it, this is where I think this could be very fun. So some of these goals can be very small goals that you know that you're going to check off very easily, or they might be larger goals for yourself. So for example, I'm I'm looking right now as I talked to you about this in terms of my goals. Well, one of my goals for 2022.
Was to buy a new mattress. My mattress was many years old and it needed to be replaced. I had another goal that was to buy ear pods that fit into my ears because I have very small ears and I have a hard time finding ear pods that are comfortable.
You know, even little things like, you know, buying a new pot or a pan for the kitchen or finding a consistent babysitter, you know, all of these things made it to my, you know, 22 list for 2022. And then of course, there was work related things as well, you know, in terms of submitting. The paper that I had written about the impact of yoga nidra on depression, anxiety, and stress among VET students and.
Different collaborations that I wanted to pursue, different things that I wanted to achieve. So all that to say, it can be very fun. It can be very light and it can be also very relevant to your work life, maybe things that you want to achieve as well as your personal life as well. So if you are interested in.
That this idea comes from Gretchen Rubin, who is the author of The Happiness Project. Select and she started promoting this idea many years ago and I will link up to the download on her website where you can download your list of things for the year and you can start to create your list that way.
So another strategy that you might consider as you move into the new year is to set monthly goals or challenges. So we see this a lot typically at the beginning of the year whereby people will celebrate dry January. So they will challenge themselves to not have any alcoholic beverages for the month of January.
There are many other challenges that you can do throughout the year and you can do these according to different themes that are present. You know, within the year. So for example, February, we typically think of as heart health months. So maybe for the month of February, you have the goal to move your body or to do aerobic exercise for 30 minutes a day.
There's so many different things that you can do in the context of monthly goals or challenges, and the really fun way for you to do this would be to do this with a group of people. So whether you do it with people you work with, whether you do it with your family, your partner, your friends.
But doing these monthly challenges is a great way to really immerse yourself in something and then hopefully by the end of that month, you've now established it as a habit and then you can move on to something else. So Speaking of habits, the last strategy that I want to share with you in the context of the new year is to focus on setting goals that you want to turn into habits.
So rather than looking at the new year, as you know, I resolved to do this and then a lot of pressure is put on those things and and we may or may not be able to sustain them well very often we're not able to sustain them because they don't form themselves into habits. So if you look at, this is not just a resolution for the year, but this is a habit that I'm going to start.
In the New Year, in this clean slate moment of a fresh start, and I'm going to have these strategies in place to support me in making this a habit that I, you know, at some point in time for most people, it's somewhere after three to six weeks where something becomes a habit.
You know you will have, you will have set yourself up for success because now it's something that you don't even have to think about, and that resolution will stick with you for the rest of the year. So when it comes to strategies for creating these healthy habits, one example would be convenience. So making sure that whatever it is that you want to do or achieve. Is as convenient as possible.
So I'll use the example of exercise again. It is so important when we think about exercising on a regular basis to make it as convenient as possible. For some people, this might mean sleeping in their workout clothes, having their shoes at the foot of the bed, so they literally wake up, put their shoes on, and go for a run, or go to the gym. You can even go so far as to have your gym.
In your home. So I have my stationary bike at home. I have an app on my phone. I use the Peloton app and I do strength. Cleaning and stationary bike work at home in the comfort of my basement, and so it's very accessible. It's very convenient and it almost ensures that I will exercise on a daily basis. You might choose to get a membership at a gym and when you do, I urge you to find a gym that is very close to work or very close to home.
So that it's not going to be an extra added drive to get yourself there so that it is convenient. Another strategy that you can use as the strategy of monitoring, so this is where a lot of people really benefit from having an activity monitor on their watch. They have, you know, a Fitbit or some other form of an activity monitor whereby you can monitor your steps, you can monitor your sleep, you can monitor your cardiovascular fitness.
Technology is just amazing in this way, and that it's given us all these tools. That we can use to see how our activities as they change are impacting our health and well-being. So whether you use technology, whether you keep a journal and you keep track of you know what you're doing, what you've implemented, the impact it has on your weight, on your mood, on your.
Health other health parameters. I mean the the you know, the strategies are endless, but the point is is that we manage what we monitor. So if you are monitoring these things in your life then you are more likely to stick with them.
Another strategy is the strategy of accountability. So you might enlist an accountability partner that might be your very own partner. That might be a friend, a family member, someone you work with, but someone who you know has the same goals or similar goals that you have and that you can hold each other to them so that you can make the commitment.
To make sure that neither of you slide in your efforts to make these goals into habits. Another strategy that works really well is the strategy of scheduling. So again, in the words of Gretchen Rubin, something that can happen at any time often happens at no time. I know for me on the days that I say, well, I'll exercise at some point tomorrow. I almost always don't end up exercising, because if it's not in the schedule, it is less likely to happen.
So if you do want to make the commitment to meditating every day or exercising every day, or going on a walk every day, connecting with a friend once a week, put it in your calendar, it is much more likely to happen when it is actually scheduled.
And then the last strategy that I'll share with you by way of example is the strategy of pairing. So when we think about pairing or what some people refer to as habit stacking, this means that you have something in your life that you always do every day without thinking of it, such as brushing your teeth, waking up, going to bed, making coffee, whatever it is.
Is and if you can stack a habit that you want to do on top of that already existing habit, you are more likely to keep that new habit. So this could be as simple as well, when the coffee is brewing. I'm going to do a quick seven minute workout or when as as soon as I wake up, you know in the morning I'm going to do a meditation or before I go to bed at the end of the day, I'm going to listen to a podcast. You know, there's many, many different strategies that you can use.
In terms of pairing to look at some of the things that you already do and think about what is something health promoting and beneficial for me that I could tag on to this thing that I am already doing. So there's many, many more strategies for habit formation. And again I mentioned Gretchen Rubin, she's one of my favorite authors.
In her book better than before, which I will link to you in the show notes she exhaustively talks about various strategies for keeping and breaking habits, depending on what your goals are. And so I will direct you to that amazing resource if you are looking for more strategies and if this is something that you really want to delve into in the new year.
So once again, those different ways in which you can have a new approach to your resolutions for the upcoming year are to again go with a list, my favorite being the list of how many goals is in the year in which we are.
As well as to do monthly goals or challenges and then also to pick, you know, a handful or even just one goal that you want to turn into a habit this year and to focus on strategies that you will use to support that becoming a habit that is the best advice that I can give you moving into the new year. To cultivate these goals that are going to support your health and wellbeing.
So that's it for this episode of reviving Bette Med. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found this information helpful. It's a bit of a short episode, but sometimes the shortest episodes are the sweetest and that this is giving you 3 easy ways that you can use to solidify and meet your goals for the upcoming year. If you found this episode helpful, please take a moment to send it to a friend or a colleague who you think would also benefit.
And I would also love it if you would subscribe to get the episodes of reviving vet Med as soon as they drop. I'm also excited to announce that my eight week online program from Burnout to balance is going to be running again February to March 2023. I share that with you because one of the weeks within that program is on strategies for forming healthy habits. So we do a deeper dive into making our goals into habits to really support. Our mental health and wellbeing.
So For more information on that program, please visit marieholowaychuk.com/burnout where you can register now. Thank you so much to my amazing assistant Jamie for producing this episode. And of course, thank you for listening through to the end. Until next time. Take care of yourself. Bye now.
