Chart Your Course for 2023 with Pete Egoscue

Make 2023 The Year that You Finish What You Start, Regardless of the Journey

There is something magical about the clock striking midnight on December 31^st. We reminisce about what was, as we welcome in what’s to come. We raise our glass to a clean slate and a new season.

Many of us set goals or resolutions. And we typically think through what we want to accomplish in multiple areas of our lives.

And, sadly, many of us end up giving up on those goals or resolutions fairly quickly after setting them.

But why is that? Why do we change our minds or give up or get distracted so easily?

More often than not, it’s because we get discouraged.

• For some of us, we aren’t seeing the results we wanted to see on our weight loss journey.
• For others, we miss a couple days in a row of working out, or we ate that donut shortly after swearing off sweets.
• And for a lot of you who resolved to eliminate your pain this year, your pain has gone from an eight on the pain scale to a five, but it’s still lingering around.

So you aren’t losing weight, or you didn’t stick to your diet, or you aren’t pain free yet, and somewhere in the back of our mind the question starts to creep in…”Why even try?”

What we too often forget, however, is that we overestimate what we can accomplish in a month, and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. Or we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in five years.

And none of us are immune to that thinking. Many of us abandon ship way too early. We assume that the donut we snuck while in the break room has completely ruined our diet. We struggle to come to grips with the fact that not making it to the gym today was ok. And, we erroneously assume that because our pain has “only” gone from an eight to a five on the pain scale that we will never be pain free.

Small Steps

In each scenario, we aren’t focusing on the big picture. We have lost sight of the fact that we can make a 1% improvement every day. And, even if we went backwards 1% yesterday, we can still get 1% better today and get back to even.

In other words, we are overestimating the short-term return and forgetting the long-term investment that we are making, whether it is eating better, working out more frequently or committing to getting pain free.

So, in 2023, show yourself a little grace, because if you fall off the wagon, you can climb back on! Allow yourself a donut every now and then. Give yourself a day off from the gym. And don’t overestimate what you can accomplish in a year while underestimating what you can accomplish in five! Don’t forget no matter how many times you read The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise always wins.

Make 2023 the year that you finish what you started, regardless of what the journey looks like.