TINAH Talks | Mental Health and Wellbeing Podcast

37. How To Make New Years Resolutions And Stick To Them

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2025 if fast approaching, and it’s about that time of year where people start to reflect on the year just gone and consider what they want moving forward. In this weeks episode of the TINAH Talks podcast we’re reflecting on the pressures surrounding New Year's resolutions and how we can reframe “resolutions” in to “intentions.”

Often we can set ourselves highly unrealistic expectations during this time, so we are turning resolutions on their head in this episode and discussing the importance of being mindful and present, and how to create achievable goals and intentions instead of setting yourself targets that you won’t hit.

We dive into the psychological aspect of goal setting, the impact of social media on self-perception, and the historical context of New Year's resolutions.

If one of your intentions is to start improving your mental wellbeing next year make sure you download our mental health tool-kit here: https://timeisnotahealer.com/pages/subscribe-to-tinah

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Kelsey (00:01)
Welcome back to another Tinah Talks episode. We are your hosts, I am Kelsey and this is Sophie. And today we're talking all about the wonderful pressures that come with New Year's and New Year's resolutions. How you doing, Sophie?

Sophie (00:16)
Good, how are you?

Kelsey (00:19)
You know, just cruising through life, trying to survive each day. You know, yeah, you know, when I think about this coming year,

Sophie (00:23)
Have you set yourself any New Year's resolutions yet? Soon as we're done. Let's start there.

Kelsey (00:36)
my goals have kind of been the same for the last couple of years. It's always just an iteration of what I've already been working on. right, like personally, I want to continue to do more with my fitness. I did fall out of my fitness a little bit this year, but I'm now like back into it. And I want to I've started to get into weightlifting. And so I really want to like hone that skill and get more comfortable with that.

And by the end of 2025, I seriously want to be able to do a handstand. I've had that for like the last two years and my handstands have like definitely improved, but I haven't been like so focused on it, but it would be like way better. So I've got intentions around my fitness and then my other intentions are just around my business and like where I want to see Tinah go and where I want to see my personal business go and, and kind of just like enjoying my life and building my life in Chicago.

I'm still doing obviously as you know quite a bit of traveling but I want to be more mindful and strategic in how I'm traveling because it's very different than how I've been doing it the last seven years with like living in other countries. So yeah, so I would say more like for me it's been more intentions that I just continually like look at, okay what did I improve? Great, now what didn't I improve and what can I can do to further that along? How about you?

Sophie (01:57)
I like the word intentions because that's something I really want to talk about in this episode today because I feel like we put so much pressure on the word resolution or goals whereas I really like the word intention because it feels a little bit softer. And I guess my intentions and I'll talk about my views on this but I don't necessarily feel like it's for the new year, it's just in life. My intention at this moment in time in my life is to kind of...

reconfigure the way that I am living and working because at the moment I've been living nomadically for the past three years. I love that, still want to be nomadic, definitely don't see myself living back in the UK anytime soon if ever. But I do feel like I want a base in some way. I don't think I'll be at that base 100 % of the time. I don't think that's...

something that is ever gonna be a me thing, honestly, because I have literally been traveling now for 10 years and I haven't actually been anywhere for more than about two years. So in that time, so, and I feel like after about a period of time, I do get a of an itch to go somewhere and do something else. But at the same time, within that 10 years, I've always had a base, right? I've always had a home, I've always had somewhere to live. Whereas I've just sold that home. Hopefully she just got rid of my stability.

and I want to then find that stability in a different way basically. So that's kind of my intention for the new year is to figure out what does that stability look like? Does that mean moving my tax residency somewhere else? Does that mean finding a property somewhere else? Does that mean settling roots somewhere where I have all of my belongings in one location? Because at the moment they're in different places. But yeah, that would be my kind of like intention, not necessarily like say for the new year, but in general in my life at this moment in time.

I think there's a reason why New Year's resolutions don't work, right? Like we all go into this new year thinking, new year, new me, I'm going to like be new and improve this year. I'm going to change the X, Y, Z about myself. And we can set all of these resolutions, as so we call them, I would prefer to call them intentions. But so often we set things that are super unrealistic and that then leads to so many additional complications like stress, burnout, feelings of inadequacy.

when we don't actually achieve them because nine out of 10 times I remember when I was a bit younger in my early 20s and I didn't really understand about like goal setting or mental health or any of that and every January I'd go in and be like right I'm gonna go to the gym seven days a week I'm gonna eat so healthy like and then by the end of January am I fucked doing any of those things like I can't I can't keep up because I've set really unrealistic expectations and then that has a really negative reverse impact of what the initial resolution was having because then I'll be like

I'm used to some I might as well just overeat. I didn't go to the gym this week so why would I go next week? You actually have the complete reverse effect. I feel like yeah, New Year's resolutions, I think it's great to have the intentions going into a new time period whether that's a new day, a new week, a new year, but when it comes to actually putting all of our eggs in that one basket of the new year is starting, I have to do everything, I think that's actually quite damaging. I don't know, what's your thoughts?

Kelsey (05:12)
Yeah, no, you're preaching to the choir here. I mean, I really like what you say in terms like, right, whether it's a new year, new month, new day, new week, it doesn't matter. We always have the choice to make different decisions from what we did a day ago to an hour ago. I can choose to do things differently. And I think when it comes to looking at like New Year's resolutions,

like to look at things as like I am a continual work in progress, right? I'm a work in progress the entire year. So I guess I should have said when I was talking about my intentions, for me, these intentions, I'm working on them right now. I'm not waiting until New Year's to make changes or do things. Like I said, I had fallen out of my fitness routine at the beginning of this year, and I've just gotten back into it in the last two months. And I'm traveling right now and I make...

made sure I brought my travel mat and I'm doing yoga and I'm working out at least every other day. I'm back on it being a commitment that's important to me. I'm not going to wait until New Year's to do that because I know how fitness affects my mental health and helps with my anxiety. So I think what you're talking about is the importance of if there are things that we want to change and we want to work on, that's the first step is recognizing and being aware and then deciding to implement those into your life.

And the way that we successfully do that is in small progressive steps. You kind of mentioned the whole like, yeah, I'm to go to the gym seven days a week, right? Cause that's with that new year's resolution. It's like, this is the one time of year that I get to make a change. And so now I'm going to go balls to the wall and I'm going to do that. And in psychology, we call that that all or nothing thinking. And it's a negative feedback loop because what happens when you miss a day, then you're really hard on yourself. you're like, why?

stuff and I guess I messed like it's all it's all gone shit I can't do any of it and so might as well not go tomorrow I've like already broken the cycle and we go down this negative thought pattern because we didn't achieve what we set out to achieve but what we set to achieve was really really unrealistic so yeah I'm with you on all this I as you know for those who don't know when I used to work in the psychology field my my my foot in the door that got me into the field and into

The first place that I worked and all that is I helped the manager start and implement a goals group. And mainly, right, this was inpatient. So these were with people who were really struggling with their mental health at the time. So we really had to scale it back in terms of, okay, you know, what are your immediate things on your plate right now that you're struggling to show up and do? If it's struggling to show up and do daily self care, like take a shower, make sure you're eating, or maybe you have to make a difficult phone call because you've got to fill family members in on what's going on with you. Something very small.

This can also be applied in everyday life, right? Like you're not feeling good. You can tell your anxiety is running rampant. What's one change you can make that's really simple and small that you could try to start to implement? For me, it's always around my caffeine intake. It's like, I'm working out, but my anxiety is still really high. What's one thing that I could do? I'm going to cut out coffee. I'm going go back to decaf. I'm going to go back to decaf tea, whatever, right? Like,

There are very small things that we can implement and it's focusing on concrete action steps and then giving yourself a realistic boundary around accomplishing it. And so the thing that I use with myself and that I actually still continue to use with my clients is I call them like buffer windows. I'm sure it's referred to other things and like, you know, the different habit books and all this, but I call it a buffer, right? So I know how important exercise is to me to feel better.

Yeah, ideally is it great if I'm working out six days a week, one day of rest, whatever. Yeah, maybe. But that's not one how my energy flows as a female, my energy changes from week to week. So I have to know that I have to do different exercises at different periods of my cycle. And my buffer is I just will not go longer than two days without working out. So if it comes to the second day,

And it's almost on the third day and I haven't worked out that third day. You bet your ass I'm working out. And if it's like just going for a 45 minute walk because my energy is really low and I'm in that particular phase of my cycle, fine. I'm going for a 45 minute walk or I'm doing like yin yoga or if I've got the energy, I'm doing weightlifting or high intensity interval, whatever like feels best for my energy at the time. But I have a commitment to show up for myself at least.

like three times a week to move my body more than 30 minutes. And I try to use that buffer window of like, I actually haven't worked out in two days. I really need to commit to that tomorrow. So that's a priority for me. And I put that on my to-do list. And so it's looking at these concrete actions and establishing them within a realistic framework and timeline of your life and your energy and committing to it and just being out of your comfort zone a little bit because you need that, right? With change and growth.

You have to be out of your comfort zone. I don't know, Honey, but what do you think about some of that I just babbled for a minute?

Sophie (10:29)
No, just babbled about interesting things. The buff window I think is really interesting and I've read this a lot in different variations, in different ways, but I can't remember exactly which book it was that I read but they were saying that it's okay when you skip one day. It's when it's like you start getting to like the two, the three, the four and then that's when you start falling out of the habit, right? And it takes such a long time for us to build a habit that when we're in it...

Ideally we don't want to then just lose it because then we've got to start from kind of scratch again. So I like the idea of that window because I think that that gives you a little bit more of extra flexibility rather than just being like shit it's day two I can't miss a second day. Like it gives you that slight more flexibility which I think allows your brain to relax a little bit more whereas you're going to be more willing to be able show up for it especially like you say as a woman it is a bit harder sometimes we can't

our brain, our hormones controls the show. And it is a little bit more challenging sometimes to do the things that we need to do in the time that we need to do them. Because, like, for example, I've just come off of my period and like the past few days, I have been exhausted, like absolutely exhausted. Like I couldn't do anything that was one day where I just wanted to sleep, didn't want to do anything. Whereas if that, luckily it fell on a Saturday, but if that had fallen on a Monday and I had a nine to five job, let's say.

I've got responsibilities to show up for. can't always just be like, I can't do this. But if that was a habit that I wanted to continue in my day-to-day life, I would have the option then to be like, I can't do it today, but I've got a buff window of three days. In three days, I know that I'm going have a little bit more energy. So I'm going shift that from Monday to Wednesday to Thursday, like whatever it looks like for you. So I like that concept. And you've obviously just covered one specific type of resolution that most people generally go to when it's

comes into January is like fitness, like let's get back on our fitness schedule. That's obviously like the go-to, let's get back in the gym. I always remember when I used to be a member of the gym here in the UK, you go in on the 1st of January, for example, and it's like, maybe not the 1st, because people hung over the 2nd of January, and it's rammed. And you're just like, my God, I've been going to this gym for years. And suddenly there's all these newbies that have just decided to come to the gym.

Kelsey (12:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sophie (12:48)
But I know that in three weeks time, it's not going to be anywhere near as busy because half of them are going to have dropped off. So I always think that that's a really interesting one because it's not like the gym isn't there the rest of the year, you know? Like the gym is always there. So I always find that quite interesting that people choose to do it in January. And I get that new year, new slate, new me, whatever. But going back to kind of what we're saying, like it doesn't every day is a new opportunity to try something new. We don't have to wait to January to join the gym.

Kelsey (13:01)
Yeah? Yeah.

Sophie (13:17)
One thing I do think, there are a couple though that I do think are kind of seasonal and generally work better when they are in the new year, January, just purely because of timelines, like career changes and home changes, for example. Because if, for example, let's say right now when we're recording this, it's November, right? Let's say I want a new job. I'm thinking, right, I want to change my career right now. I'm not happy in my job.

If I start applying for jobs right now, let's say that recruitment process takes two weeks, we're then going to the end of November. I then might go through some interviews. I get into December, everyone's at their Christmas parties, everyone's switching off for Christmas. I get then into January and I still haven't really got anywhere from when I was in November. So that's been three months of like kind of stress, anxiety of me going through that recruitment process when actually in some cases it might have been better for me to just wait to January.

and start looking then and not stress myself out for that three months where I wasn't really going to go very far. Same if you're buying property, for example, let's say again, you can start looking for property, again, solicitors, agents, they all close for quite long period of time over Christmas. So then your whole process gets delayed by two to three weeks. So there are things that I completely understand that are like, as we go into January, I'm going to start that because things start to reopen. But it's the same concept. I used live in Italy.

Kelsey (14:30)
Yes.

Yeah.

Sophie (14:42)
and our office would shut down for whole month in August and it was like we couldn't do anything summer, we couldn't do anything in summer so when you come back in September that's almost like starting a new year as well. So I think there are some changes that happen slightly more seasonally but things like fitness goals, healthy eating, changing your habits and routines, starting a new hobby, making new friends, none of those resolutions that you're going to set yourself or intentions you're going to set yourself according to that really abound by any sort of time. Does that make sense?

Kelsey (14:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, and since we're talking about time, I want to come at it from like the other end, right? Like, you're right, they're not found by time. There are some things that are better than others in different seasons that make total sense logistic wise. But I think what's important to remember, like when you're making changes, and so this is more in the category of you're making personal changes, right? Like starting a new hobby, you're, you know, trying to make new friends, you are trying to start new habits and routines and all these things.

what I tell my clients all the time. I think there was like, they say it takes 30 days to form a habit. I'm gonna tell you guys that that is complete bullshit. That is not accurate. It takes, from the moment that you're aware that you wanna make a change about something, it takes 30 days of trial and error of trying like, do I like this? Or okay, let's just, the easiest thing is let's just say fitness. We'll go back to fitness, because that's an easy one.

start working out. And the first week I'm like, okay, I'm gonna work out, I'm gonna work out before I go to work every morning or whatever it is I'm doing. And then you try to do it throughout the week, but things keep popping up, you didn't sleep really well, or then you're too tired, or you're like rushing to work, whatever it is. And so at the end of that first week, you're like, okay, maybe in the morning is not a good time for me to be doing exercise. Maybe I can try it during lunchtime, or maybe I can try it like right after work. And it's a lot of trial and error and looking at what are the personal roadblocks that

come up or the things that you like and dislike about the entire process and fine tuning that. That happens within 30 days. The next 30 days, once you figure that out, is you trying to be consistent and honing in on that habit. And so the habit forms technically within 60 days and then within 90 days, an additional 30 days of you consistently showing up and doing that habit, now it's a part of your lifestyle. And when it's a part of your lifestyle,

If you do happen to drop out of it because things happen, that's okay. Typically, if you've gotten to that point where it's in your lifestyle and you drop out a little bit, it's easier for you to get back into it at later point. Because you've already done all the legwork of the trial in the air, figuring it out. You've shown up consistently. You've seen some results for yourself. You felt the benefits of it. And then you got it into your life. And so I think when you look at things timewise, right? Like, yeah, you could start whatever you

You can do it in March, you can do it in November, you can do it whenever, but no, it's gonna take a little bit of time and effort and energy to make that a part of your life. And so to me, that just like feeds back into, it doesn't matter when, just start making it, it's better. What is, there's a really famous quote that's like, the best time to start was yesterday, the second best time is to start today.

Sophie (18:04)
Yeah, on that note, I really want to share something that I've been reading because I've been reading The Power of Now. It's a book, but I just want to share this quote in there because it's all about the delusion of time, basically. And where is it? It's basically saying, time isn't precious at all because it's an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time, but the one point that is out of time, the now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time, past and future, the more you miss the now. The most precious thing there is.

Kelsey (18:10)
Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sophie (18:33)
So essentially they're saying basically the only moment that we are ever in is now. We can think about the future, we can think about the past, but actually the only moment we're ever going to get anything done is now. So exactly what you're saying, yeah, would have been great if we did it yesterday, but we're not getting yesterday back. can't, we could start tomorrow, but why would we not just start it today? And I think living a bit more presently and thinking, okay, if I start today,

I'm going to see the benefits tomorrow. I'm going to see the benefits the next day. I'm going to start to build some of these things into my life and start over time to see the benefits of something. think there is, if we can live by the motto that there is no better time than the present moment, I think everyone would have an easier time in like definitely starting habits at least.

Kelsey (19:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I like that. think guys no more, we're not doing New Year's resolutions. It's New Year's intentions to be living more presently, right? I think it's just like, it's a check-in to be like, are you living your most present life? If you're not, if you're like, my God, there's so many things that I want to change about my life, pick one and start with that and see how you can start living presently in the now around and with that.

Sophie (19:36)
Exactly.

Kelsey (19:49)
I'm worried I'm stick with that one.

Sophie (19:51)
Yeah, I mean it is interesting that we're doing this topic today because I'm literally right in the middle of the power of Nauburg and I definitely have been practicing more living in the present moment. I'd say for about two years now like that is definitely something that's been consciously playing in my mind but I wouldn't say I'm perfect, that's it, definitely not. Nobody is perfect at anything but like this is just like reiterating so many things that I already know but maybe rephrasing it in a different way so it's interesting and

One thing that when I was doing a bit of research on this subject for us to talk about this topic, I did a bit of research on like where the bloody hell did New Year's resolutions come from? And I actually found this really interesting that the idea and the tradition, they name it when I googled this, of setting New Year's resolutions, I'm just going to read this word for words, dates back over 4,000 years to ancient Babylon during the festival called Akitu, where the Babylonians made promises to their gods.

Kelsey (20:31)
Yeah.

Sophie (20:49)
And the New Year actually used to begin in March and they were basically pledged to repay their debts, return their borrowed objects as they believed that those commitments would be favorable with the gods and help to ensure a more prosperous year ahead. they actually, again, we're talking about the New Year for us, traditionally is January, right? But actually throughout different cultures, different religions, the New Year starts at so many different times with the flipping year. it doesn't...

We put so much pressure just because like the clock strikes and we are physically in the next year, the next 365 days. But actually, if you look at like Chinese New Year, for example, that generally starts late January, sometimes in February. Jewish New Year is in September or October. Persian New Year is in March. Thai New Year is in April. The Hindu New Year is in October or November. So there's so many different variations, but all with the same sentiment that we want to renew something and do start.

Kelsey (21:16)
Yeah.

Sophie (21:45)
something again, but the time, we don't need to be time bound with it. We don't have to wait for these occurrences. We've just been reiterating, and I think this is going to be the key message that comes out of this today, is that there's no better time to do some of these things in the present. We don't have to wait for the new year to begin.

Kelsey (22:03)
Yeah, I think what you've read in that description, I think hits it spot on. It's a time to honor your commitments. So it doesn't matter if the year is in January, February, March, April, May, June, whenever. Whenever it is that you're taking a moment to like look at like how are you living presently in your life and what do you need to be doing to better honor the commitments in your life so that you can be living more purposely, living more fully and you could be thriving. That's what you want.

to be looking at. And you're right, time doesn't matter. It's an illusion.

Sophie (22:37)
It is an illusion and it's almost like a bit a myth isn't it? That we put so much pressure on ourselves.

Kelsey (22:43)
Yeah, it's been a myth. I think, sorry. Yeah, we put so much pressure on ourselves. And I was just going to say, think like what's made it worse now for sure. A hundred percent social media, right? Like there's, mean, cause it's part of our culture, like, new years, like new year, new me, new, you know, new this. And I think that like a lot of people put stuff out there. And I think that

Sophie (22:48)
Hello.

Kelsey (23:07)
It's a great reminder to take a moment to reflect and like, are your intentions and what sort of commitments do you need to be honoring? But it shouldn't just be happening one time a year. It should be happening, you know, frequently, once a month, checking in with yourself, right? Like we only got this one life to live as far as I know, and I want to make the most of it. So like, how can we do that? And I just, it's unfortunate because we see...

I think there's this pressure from social media that you see people who are like doing all these things and achieving all this and you're like, it makes you feel behind. Like you're not, you're not doing what you're supposed to. And it sucks.

Sophie (23:45)
Yeah, well, how about our newest resolution is to stop believing what we're seeing at the same time, because it also like 80 % of what we see online and on social media is completely fake. Like pretty much everything on social media these days we are being sold to, we are being marketed to. And I could do a whole conversation about this because it drives me absolutely mad. Like the amount of things that you see online that are not actually as they seem, but we get buying into these.

stories or these false narratives, it drives me crazy. And I think, yeah, that is a massive part to do with the pressure that we put on ourselves because we think, yeah, we're behind. We don't have what this person has. my God, but I could go and achieve this. And it just brings us like so many different unrealistic expectations of ourselves. And ultimately, we're only ever let down by our own expectations, right? So.

that's when we start to quit or fail after on our resolutions or goals or intentions after month one because we've put so much pressure on that. And some of the reasons generally why people do quit after the end of January, let's say, is that one, we've already spoken about it, they set overly ambitious goals. So they're simply just too big, too drastic. The change is so great. Like that's, for example, like I might say to myself, I'm going to lose two stone in a month. Okay. That's just a random number.

but is that actually achievable? Is that actually a realistic thing that I can achieve? Or I'm gonna read five books in January. Well, there's so many different factors in that specific me saying that. Like it seems like words, we just say words, right? We're just like, I'm gonna read five books in January. Okay, cool, they're just words. But now we actually need to make a plan and say, okay, is that actually realistic? Like, do I have the time amongst my job?

my life, my relationships, my just general fitness habits to also then read five books in January? Probably not. So it's about like being a bit more realistic and mindful of like is your goal actually achievable, is it attainable? Because if we're not being overly ambitious, naturally we're not going to do five books probably in January. Some people might because they like fully love reading, but for me that wouldn't be achievable for example at all.

So I'd just be like setting myself up for failure basically from day one I wouldn't be able to achieve it in which case I'm then discouraged to continue because I haven't achieved it in the time scale I could do. Quite a lot of people also lack kind of being very specific with their goal and it might just be like I'm gonna exercise more. Whereas it's like okay yeah exercise more eat healthier rather than it being like an actionable realistic specific goal of like I am gonna show up exactly what you just you said earlier.

I'm going to show up to the gym three times a week, for example. Like I'm going to show up for myself three times a week because otherwise you just say exercise more. Well, where's your baseline? What are you measuring from? And then like, where are you trying to get to? And what's the actual results that you want to achieve through exercising more? Have you got something to add to that? It looks like you've got something.

Kelsey (26:52)
Yeah, and I think that's half the battle for most people. yeah, I was like, yes, yes. I think that's half the battle for most people. mean, so what you're talking about in getting specific is you're talking about smart goals, which I think if people aren't familiar with, that means to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. And I think, right, like it goes, that's half the battle. I think for me, when it was getting into fitness, like getting into weightlifting, which I'm doing now, right, half the battle is like me being worried.

Sophie (27:04)
Mm.

Kelsey (27:22)
know how to do weightlifting, like what consists of weightlifting? And then when I'm doing it, am I doing it properly? Am I going to hurt myself? And then also do I look stupid when I'm at the gym and I don't look like I know what I'm doing? These are my three biggest barriers to getting into weightlifting. And my solution around that was I don't want to pay for a gym anyway. So we did a one time big payment for some decent weights that we can interchange. And so I have weights at home that I can use and like learn the foundations of weightlifting. And if I want to get really big into it, then I'll

go to a gym and use like the other machines. But that specific is like, yes, like when it's like, how often are you going to do this? And so I don't know if we've actually ever talked about this. So goals have been a thing of mine for a very long time. It's like, even when I started coaching, that's what I've, I've hosted goals group around the world where I've like hosted it for people, but I keep up with my whole own method for it. So instead of the smart goals, I incorporate that into something that I call simply goals.

and it's not spelled the way you think it is. It's like S-Y-M-P-L-E-E, but like that S, that's the smart goals, right? You want to be specific, that kind of thing. And then the Y is because I think most people forget this, because the next point you're about to touch on, I know you're going to talk about like why people fail at their goals is because they lose that willpower, right? Like we only have so much power and like in decision fatigue and things like that.

something that can really help with that, right? Like how do we combat the fact that we only have a limited amount of willpower? Understanding your why, right? Like why is this important to you, right? I could say for fitness, I wanna get fit and sexy, right? But that's not a deep enough why for me to truly commit to fitness. I realized that I needed to exercise in my life if I didn't wanna be an anxious ball of a mess. Like...

wanted to maintain some semblance of a balance in my mental well-being, I needed to find a tool or resource outside of meds or any sort of supplement of some sort. I wanted to find something that gave me a sense of control over it. And that became my deep why for why I'm showing up and why I'm moving my body and why I'm taking care of myself. And that helps when the motivation runs out. That helps when the willpower is really limited because I've had a really long ass day, whatever that may be.

and then the second component is to mentally visualize, right? Our brain can't tell the difference between imagined or real. So before you even get your butt into the gym or before you get into doing weight lifting, it takes time to like sit and visualize about it. Have a little mental kind of imagery of like, what does it look like you showing up and lifting those weights? And you know, what does it look like? how do you feel in terms of like, I'm doing a fitness, how's my anxiety feel? All these things.

And that kind of goes into that. then the next couple of ones are like, you have to actually plan it and you have to list the action steps and then you have to establish a time commitment and then you execute. that's, we didn't get a chance to talk about that, but I just wanted to share like kind of what we're talking about. I think it's really important to like think about these things more deeply than just like, I want to get fit and I want to go to the gym and I'll do this three times a week. Like you have to understand your reasons behind it and give yourself some concrete.

lists and actions and time commitments because that's what's going to help you actually show up and alleviate that mental, that cognitive load, that mental load that comes with starting a new habit or starting something new that's a little bit out of our comfort zone.

Sophie (31:00)
Yeah, absolutely. another thing just to add on to that, think is also understand like quite a lot of things that we're talking about are like habit changes, right? So if you want to go back into like fitness, if you want to like, let's say you want to stop smoking, you want to start eating healthy. I think one of the points that I was going to say like why people fail is that they're ignoring the actual root problem that is the reason stopping them from actually doing that task. So

For example, exactly, you just made a good example there. Like you hadn't started weightlifting because you didn't know how to do it or you were like worried about showing up in the gym or whatever or you're hurting yourself. Like that's your reason as to why you wouldn't do it, right? So like until you overcome the fear, until you overcome and take steps to learn about weightlifting, that fear is still gonna be there. So you could show up in the gym, but are you gonna pick up a weight? Probably not.

like because you haven't overcome any of those things, in which case you're very unlikely to actually achieve the goal that you want to set, which is probably getting stronger in yourself just through weightlifting. So I think people often just skip straight forward to the end result rather than start at the beginning, which is, what's stopping you from doing that right now? Because nothing's going to change between now and you actually starting this activity unless you identify that.

For example, if someone smokes or overeats, like I'm a stress eater, I have eaten so much chocolate in the past month because I've been very stressed. And until I get to the bottom, which I'm fully aware is because of my stress, I'm probably not going to give up that chocolate because I haven't been consciously thinking about it, for example. So you have to kind of come up with the reason what's preventing you from actually taking the action before you actually take the action, because otherwise you're just going to land yourself.

back in the same position and then you are going to fail at achieving that goal. And then the other thing I think that really puts people off in that first initial time period is that they don't see the results straight away. And we live in a society where we want like instant on-demand results and people just lose the motivation because either they don't track the progress, they never like documented where they were at that beginning point versus where they were a week in.

two weeks in, three weeks in, months in, and you might not be on a path to see results straight away, but because you set yourself unrealistic expectations. But if you really do track where you started and then weekly or monthly track your progress along that time, you're gonna start to see results. They might be really minor at the beginning and then a bit more drastic the further in you get to them.

But if you can start seeing minor changes, you can then start envisaging the major changes. And I think that that's where people often fall off is like, I'm not making any progress. So then they just quit. And that is I've seen that so much. Like I do mentoring quite a lot for e-commerce business owners. And I see it so often where people have this amazing idea and they're like, yeah, I'm to go all in and then it gets hard and then they don't see the progress.

And then they just quit because it just doesn't, they don't have the emotional resilience to be able to keep kind of going with it. And they haven't seen the progress. They get demotivated, they get lost. And I think particularly this is really relevant for business owners because business isn't easy. Like it's not easy 100 % of the time. Like things are ebbs and flow all the flipping time. You have to pivot, you have to change, you have to adapt to the current situations of life. And it could be so easy.

Kelsey (34:19)
and

Sophie (34:36)
particularly when you've got shit loads going on, to just be like, I quit, I don't want to do it anymore, I give up, I'm not seeing the progress. But actually, if you look back at where you started, where you came from, and look at where you are now, I can almost guarantee you, like, there was progress. It's just that we lose sight of it because it doesn't match up with our own personal expectations of what we think we can achieve. We're not superhuman at the end of the day, like, nobody can achieve anything overnight, and actually nothing worth having comes overnight. So I think we have to...

Kelsey (34:53)
Yeah.

Sophie (35:05)
Remember that we're in it for the long haul, not just an overnight win.

Kelsey (35:10)
Yeah, no, and I like that you bring up like tracking, tracking that progress because I think right it one to be able to see like, how am I feeling, you know, so for me, if I'm with fitness, it would be like, how's my anxiety on a day to day basis? Am I seeing improvement kind of thing? But also tracking one gives us a little dopamine win. Today I worked out, check. Like I did the thing that I wanted to, but it also gives us the data.

to see like, know, out's not really doing it for me. Well, no shit, like I only worked out once last week. In my mind, I was like, yeah, I showed up and I like did some stuff, but I only really did a full workout one time. And that gives me data to then see to like track my progress again, to be like, this is maybe why it's not working and how I could potentially improve this, right? So there's a lot of moving parts to.

having intentions of like changes in behavior and things that we want to do. But yeah, I think you kind of hit home on a lot of those good points. And I think when we set like unrealistic expectations, unrealistic resolutions, or we only do this one type, one time of year, it really does just set us up for like kind of ultimate failure.

Sophie (36:34)
Yeah, absolutely. And it actually really impacts, it has the reverse effect, I think, because it actually then impacts our mental health. Because if we are setting our own expectations and we're not meeting them, that's then going to cause us stress to think we have to achieve the expectation. It's going to cause us anxiety. And we're going to constantly feel like we're falling short. And we're constantly going to feel disappointed by the fact that we're not meeting our own expectations, in which case we're then going to

lead on to a fear of failure, which is like the expectation that we should be hitting this goal, but we're not. Then we're not going to meet it because of all of these things. And then we're going to start getting really self-critical and like come into like self-destructive behaviors and habits because we haven't been meeting them. So we're like, what's the point anyway? We're shit. We're not doing good enough, blah, blah, blah. And then because of all of this, we're then going to go into like a burnout because we've been trying to like keep up and like race to hit all of these goals.

Kelsey (37:07)
Yeah.

Sophie (37:27)
And then it's just going to get to a point where we're like so mentally fatigued by it that we just can't continue doing it. So the mental health aspects of it is actually quite extreme. Like if we don't follow this in like a really an order that makes sense, there's actually going to be a lot of implications for you as well. And I think there's also then later on down the line comes at the guilt of being like, I quit. Like, why did I quit? Why didn't I achieve all of the things I wanted to achieve? And then

that doesn't make us feel good about ourselves. So actually, if we're not really quite strategic about the way that we manage our goals and expectations of ourselves, it can have a really big knock on impact of our mental health and you're probably in a better place to kind of talk to that. yeah, like, is there anything that I've missed that? Like what kind of things like could we expect if we didn't necessarily set our intentions wisely and try and meet them wisely?

Kelsey (38:24)
Yeah. I mean, before we moving on, moving on to like how we could do that wisely, I think just take a look at like our commercial industries. Like, like you said, anything like around the new years, at least in the U S and I know UK is saying with like the years, just, December 31st, January 1st, but right. Like people, let the commercial industries.

feed off of this. This is why there's so much with fitness and there's so much with like nutrition and there's so much with beauty products and health and wellness and relationship stuff. Like this is why you see people try to like it's a legitimate issue because they try to set New Year's resolutions and then it doesn't happen and they fall back into that cyclical trap and then the commercial industry makes money off of it. Like it's a real problem and it exists for a reason. So

Just remember that when you feel like, like I know we've talked about this already in terms of like, doesn't have to be around New Year's, but even as you're working on whatever new intentions or changes you're trying to make, cut yourself some slack. It's a really hard thing to do. And I think giving ourselves grace in that process is probably the number one thing, like the most important thing to do, right?

trying to change long-standing behaviors or trying to do something new that's really uncomfortable and out of our comfort zone, it's really, really fricking hard. So give yourself a little bit of grace, a little bit of kindness. I mean, still be the firm kick in the butt that you like make the commitment to show up and do certain things. But then when it doesn't go right or it's not happening.

be kind to yourself about it and objectively take a look at like how can I, how can I improve this? What is, what do I need to do with the intention that I set? How do I need to shift and change it? Can I start smaller? Can I create maybe more incremental goals that are gonna support what I ultimately wanna do with this larger intention? And I know we've been talking about like time, make this a few month to a year long mindset, right? This is.

Progress doesn't happen overnight, baby. It doesn't happen for anything in business and life. And so having the mindset that like this isn't just a January thing or this isn't just a March thing or whatever it is that you're gonna do it, but like give yourself the time and space to really work on that and have the slow progress to something greater.

Sophie (40:59)
Yeah exactly. So if I was just going about my now and I wanted to start working on my goals as of today, like what would your best practical starting point advice be for me?

Kelsey (41:15)
Yeah. God, absolutely. So I'll have to dig in my resources because this is like an old resource that, haven't, I mean, I use the concept all the time, but I like, think I have like a put together resource on it. And so maybe we can link it to this episode, but I would use the simply goals method. So let's get specific and, I would always recommend start with one thing.

Don't be trying to work on your career and your fitness and your relationship goals all at once. Like pick one and try to hone that in first, at least for the first two months. And then if you want to shift, then you can shift to the next one and you could snowball those on. But let's get specific. know, what is it? So I'll say, Sophie, what is one intention you have now that you would like to be doing for yourself? And I'll walk you through this simply.

Sophie (42:05)
Okay, what is one intention that I have for myself? Okay, right, so I am pivoting my business and I really want to pivot it in a new direction. So I need to go through the process. I want to go through the process of setting it up in a slightly different way so that it is set up ready for whenever I decide to start marketing it in this new way. The backend is ready to go basically.

Kelsey (42:29)
Okay, so you're basically launching kind of a new version of your business. Yeah, so that's pretty specific. Why do you want to do this? So we're on the why part of the simply goal. Why is this important to you?

Sophie (42:33)
Exactly.

because I haven't necessarily been happy running, not Tinah, this is my other business, haven't necessarily been happy running my business past year and it felt like it was stagnating, I felt like I wasn't making progress and this new model that I want to pivot it into is way more aligned with me as person and the message that I want to put out to the world rather than the old messaging that I was putting out.

Kelsey (43:08)
Okay, okay, so you're talking a lot about what you don't want, what is it that you would want? Because that will only get you so far. Why is it important to to accomplish this?

Sophie (43:20)
Because I want to live more authentically in the way that I want to run my business. I want it to be more authentic to the way that I live, which is kind of essentially living a life outside of the nine to five, living a little bit alternatively, not within that white picket fence life and inspiring more people to do that, like to live the dreams, live a life they love doing something they love basically.

I felt like I wasn't living authentically to that doing the thing that I was doing previously, so I want to pivot back into the thing that I do love doing so I can live more authentically and then help other people do that as well.

Kelsey (43:54)
Yeah, that's great. I'm gonna be a little stickler here. And so for anyone who's in this part, this is a really significant part. So I would dig deeper. We don't have to do this on the call, but like I would say to Sophie, like, so what do you mean by living authentically? Like, what does that help you? What does that do in terms of helping your mental health, in terms of helping your relationships, in terms of helping, right? Like I would go deeper into that of like, and I know for you,

Like having that ability to be nomadic and move around and be in sunshine and beaches is really good for your mental health. I know that's like a big sticking point for you. So that would be part of your like deeper why. And so I would say go deep into that why as much as you possibly can. And then the next part would be, do you have any questions about that?

Sophie (44:35)
Yeah.

No, no, no, I already kind of knew that you were going to kind of come back with that. not because you're predictable, because I've already done bits of this work through other programmes. But I think just just touching on like that in a little bit deeper is that like I've delved quite deep into like what things that I would say are authentic about myself. And one of those is freedom. So like all my whole lifestyle revolves around like me being a little bit more free and being more flexible.

Kelsey (44:45)
You know it too well.

Sophie (45:06)
So I think part of that would come down to that specifically.

Kelsey (45:10)
Yeah, absolutely. Love that. And so then the next part would be to mentally visualize. And what I typically would encourage someone to do and how I drop myself into a visualization is I'll sit and I'll do just some deep belly breathing for like a minute. And then I do a body scan. And I'll do a body scan, which if you guys aren't familiar, you can look that up easily on YouTube or whatever. There's all sorts of links to.

kind of move through your body and feel, you know, the tension that you have. And then I would do some progressive muscle relaxation, another sort of method. And I know I'm saying a lot, but this can all be done within, I would say like five to 10 minutes. And then once you've kind of like done the progressive muscle relaxation, you want to sit and think about, you want to imagine, so this, say to Sophie, imagine Sophie a year from now being successful in the launch of this new business. What does this link?

What does this look like on a day-to-day basis? So imagine a day in the life of what that looks like. What are you really proud of? How are you feeling? What is it affecting in your life? What are you excited about that's happening around you? And so you kind of really dive deep into that. If you guys don't know, our brain can't tell the difference between reality and imagine. And so I've said this maybe on another episode before, but let's just say I hold my hand in front of my face. I'm looking at my hands.

certain parts of my brain will light up in an MRI. Now if I close my eyes and I imagine looking at my hand again, the exact same places are gonna light up in that MRI. Again, brain can't tell the difference between imagined and real. So it's important to like maybe do this for yourself now and again, especially if you're losing that willpower, if you're losing that motivation to really help rewire your brain to be like, yeah, this is what I'm trying to achieve. The point of this, a little science-y, is that this affects our reticular eye.

system which is the it's here at the base of our brain it affects the information that's allowing into our consciousness and when you are consciously working towards a specific goal or specific thing you'll start to see more opportunities in your environment and how you can achieve that so this isn't like we're just manifesting out of the blue this ideal life but you're helping yourself mentally and emotionally get on board

before it's even happened. And that's going to help you actually take more action consistently and easily as you go about doing it. So that's an important part. So the next one's where we did S, Y, now we're on the P and we'd say, okay, what's the plan that you have for this? So if you were to give me like your concrete, we'll do an overview milestones, right? Like I need to work on my marketing in this way and then I need to set up this and then I need to set up this.

This doesn't necessarily break down the concrete action steps under those milestones, but what would you map out your overview milestones to be to go from point A to point Z?

Sophie (48:07)
this because it's really putting me on the spot.

get a bit more clear on is that specifically with this new phase of business, who am I targeting? Because the target customer is not gonna be the same, right? So first step would be like target customer, then it would be like the messaging for specifically that target customer related to what I need to do. Systems, setting up the systems that are gonna be efficient from the back end and then how I'm gonna put this out to the world, how I'm gonna launch it, get it out there, spread the word and get people in and then obviously like some kind of like.

sales signup message, how am I going to get people to buy from me based on that.

Kelsey (48:49)
Yeah, yeah. And that's just a brief overview. And so I want to remind people that even when you come up with a plan and the next one, we're going to list concrete action steps. Even with you come up with both of those, the plan is ever changing, right? Sometimes we don't realize there's something that we have to do until we've already taken a little bit of action and we've taken a little bit of steps. So you just kind of have to get your first starting steps down and as much as you can map it out as possible, use some AI to like help you like, Hey, this is what I'm trying to achieve. What are some overview steps I'm going to have to work on? Right? Like,

very easy to do and you can kind of map that out. And we're not going to do this next one because it'll be very like detail oriented. But the next one is L where you're going to list. So for example, she needs to work on identifying target audience, right? That's what you're going to focus on. What are the concrete actions that make up identifying your target audience, right? Like you're going to go and research on Reddit, you're going to go and speak to people in your community, you're going to write, there's all sorts of small

steps that make up that kind of milestone that you have to accomplish. Right? Excuse me. So that's the list part. And then the last two, there's two E's. So the first E is that we want to establish a time frame. Right? What is this? It's Parkinson's Law. The time you allow

Sophie (49:55)
Exactly.

Kelsey (50:15)
for something to be accomplished is the time it will take to accomplish it. So if I say, I'm gonna give myself three hours to do this project, it's gonna take me three hours. If I say I only have an hour, you can probably, within reason, right? You could probably get that project done within an hour. Like if realistically you could do it in an hour, but you give yourself three, then it'll take three hours. Like it's just, it's Parkinson's law.

And so we want to give kind of a timeframe for each of those milestones, right? Like I want to give myself a week to accomplish identifying my target audience. Then I want to move on to my messaging and I'm going to focus on that on week two and then week three, I'm going to do X, Y and Z. Right? So you kind of want to have a little bit of an idea and this doesn't have to be super rigid, but at least enough that it's like you want to give yourself a timeframe to work in that you can stay committed to. Does that make sense?

Sophie (51:07)
Yeah, and just to, because I know we've talked about time a lot on this episode, but like time when you're creating, when you're doing something, there's no better time than present. But I guess when it comes to like taking actions, like things, you can't just do everything in the now, right? Like you do sometimes have to plan your time and manage the time wisely. But ultimately, the only thing that really matters is the thing that you're doing at that moment in time. So I like what you're saying there about like setting yourself.

timeframes like I've got an hour to do this I've got three hours to do this because I am terrible with that and I'll be like I'm gonna do this like in my head I think I can do things really quickly and I'm like I'm just gonna be able to do xyz in like a million things in a day and then get to then deb on one of those things I'm like really disappointed with myself because I haven't achieved all of these things because I have no sense of like time so I think that's really good advice like set yourself an hour on the clock

Kelsey (52:00)
Yeah?

Sophie (52:04)
work solely on that for an hour and see how you go.

Kelsey (52:08)
Yeah, no, and I think you bring up a really good point. So maybe you give yourself a, you establish the time commitment that I wanna be able to finish my target messaging within a week. You could take this a step further instead of like, right, if you're like, I could do this in a week, but then you leave it all till Friday and you have to like cram it all in on Friday. Another way, yeah, another way of establishing a time commitment is looking at, okay, like I know realistically it's gonna take a little bit of time.

Sophie (52:24)
that's me, yeah.

Kelsey (52:33)
for me to accomplish this task or maybe you have no idea. This is so new for you that you're like, don't know how long it'll take me to accomplish this task. So instead of looking at like how long to do like to accomplish it, be like, all right, I'm gonna dedicate 30 minutes every day or one hour every day to this project or this task that I'm working on. And it be like, I know that this works really well in the mornings on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm gonna dedicate an hour Tuesdays.

I can do in the afternoon and then Thursdays is a day off if I need to skip it, right? But now you've got like a time pocket that you know that you're dedicating to working on this task or this goal, right? So there's just different ways of establishing kind of that timeframe. And then the last part, because right, we all have to start somewhere is execute, execute now. So if that means like executing now, is you writing out this entire simply goal plan?

then do that right now. Like after this episode, if you're like, all right, I'm feeling motivated, let's do it. Go and write this out. Or what is the very first step that you can take to maybe you need to sit down and do the mental visualization because you haven't done it yet. Maybe you need to finish out writing your list or thinking about, okay, what's the time commitment that I can do tomorrow and starting for the rest of the week and how do I want to give myself? Remember include buffer windows because let's be realistic. Let's say, you

your goal is to make more friends, right? It's exhausting to put yourself out there every single day. So maybe your commitment is to doing something specific of reaching out on BumbleBFF or in a Facebook group of...

Sophie (54:34)
Bye bye. We've got to the pool now because I've got to go and take my actions.

Remember it's not all about setting resolutions of goals, let's reframe it and call them intentions. Thanks for listening!