Make Every Day A Sticker Day
Before my life at my current office (if you can call it a life!) I found myself weighing the most I ever had before – 210. I was a few years out of both the military and a major back surgery, so my activity level had plummeted, and my eating habits had stayed the same. I was still happy and healthy but just didn’t feel like myself. I was uncomfortable and it was time for a change. So, I bought a big wall calendar and a book of stickers.
My goal was eating a set number of calories, or less, a day. It wasn’t a big reduction either. I set a realistic goal that I could maintain over a long amount of time. Boring! But let me tell you: with that sticker book, every day I met my goal was a party at night! Before bed I would toss my hands into the air and shout at my husband, “Sticker please!!” And he would browse through the book of stickers and slap one on the calendar with a big smile and a congratulations for my hard work that day. Sometimes I’d get a really sick looking skateboard and sometimes, if he’d had a few drinks, I’d get something a little less exciting. (A triangle? Really?)
And this was our year. And 365 days later (and a good amount of stickers) I was almost 50 pounds lighter. I was back to my military weight. That calendar had done something for me that every other weight loss program I’d tried hadn’t – a fun way to visualize my entire progress smack dab in the middle of the room. It was a constant reminder of the hard work I was putting in every day. My husband and I could look it over in the morning and say, “Wow! This is the longest sticker streak I’ve gotten yet.” Even when I didn’t get a sticker that day, I could look at all the OTHER days covered in speech bubbles and alien cats and tell myself it was okay. It wasn’t about the one day where I had too many office donuts, it was about all the other days I had said no thanks. I didn’t have to beat myself up over anything because I could already see all the hard work I was putting in over time. Even during a bad streak, I had plenty of good streaks to hold it up to.
This is probably the millionth article you’ve read so far on New Year’s Resolutions. But if you’re struggling to keep up with it like so many people are, try coming up with a way to visualize all your progress in one place. Think: Is there a way you can involve the whole family in your goal? Is there a way to make it a routine part of your day to keep you motivated? Maybe you’re saving up money in a jar with a home-made thermometer on the front. Maybe you’re finally sitting down to write that novel and for every page you write you get a tattoo. (Probably don’t do that one.)
Whatever it is, and whenever you start, remember that achieving a goal takes a little progress consistently over a significant amount of time. The only things with instant results are polaroids and pudding. And even then, you still have to do some shaking and stirring.