Episode 48: 3 things that will help you hit your new year resolution

2025 is here.

Last year was my first time setting goals for different areas of my life and then working toward them. I focused on health, wealth, relationship, and side hustles. Fun fact: one of them was starting this newsletter.

This year, I did an individual reflection and goal setting + my wife and I set relationship goals. We focused on fitness, health, intimacy, finances, family (planning), travel, and community.

In addition to adding categories, I also reflected on the systems/processes needed to support meeting/exceeding these goals.

Here’s how I achieved my goal of eating healthier in 2024:

1) Break it down

On first reaction to “eating healthier”, this breaks all the rules of goals - not measurable, cleary defined, etc. That’s okay - you need to be as specific as is helpful for you.

I write down the outcome and reflect on the actual inputs + outputs to get to the outcome. I’m experimenting with how much I write down vs. verbally share for accountability.

Example questions:

1. what does healthy mean here?

2. Is there a particular meal I want to focus on - e.g. breakfast or dessert (yes dessert is a whole meal for me)

3. do I need to cut things out or add things in? both?

My answers:

1. I want to feel energized (vs. like I need a food coma) after every meal

2. breakfast and snacks/dessert

3. I want increase fruit and decrease/substitute the amount of sugary desserts

The important part is you choosing one area to particularly focus on that you think will have the most impact.

2) Find the easy things

I knew I would struggle most with nutella. I love chocolate and particularly nutella, so nutella cookies were a staple in our household (bake cookies and add a spoon of nutella on top). I also knew that I had this craving particularly late at night, which affected both how I slept and started the next day.

I made a list of all the contingency plans and sized them so I didn’t have to stop completely:

• find a healthier alternative (hard)

• decrease quantity (easy)

• decrease frequency (medium)

• avoid pairing with another unhealthy item (easy)

I ended up most consistently using #1 and #4. I also wanted to incorporate more fruit in my diet, so I compromised by only allowing myself to have nutella with fruit. I could choose whatever fruit I wanted, but if I wanted nutella I couldn’t pair it with something else unhealthy like cookies. Had to be with fruit.

This contingency plan worked. I began incorporating fruit almost every day as a dessert with nutella. Once I had consistency, I focused on the healthier alternative.

When reviewing the nutritional info, I decided to focus on the sugar - If I could find something that tasted as good with much lower sugar then I’d make the switch.

Enter Nucalato (not sponsored)

Nutella: 21g of sugar

Nucolato: 1g of sugar

Once it passed the taste test, I was really rolling. I had the consistency of incorporating more fruit and found a healthier alternative to avoid the guilty feeling of indulging, so now all I needed to focus on was the frequency and quantity (easy/medium).

I love breaking down a seemingly hard goal into a bunch of smaller goals. I almost always find that there is 1 or 2 really hard things, but there are many more easy+medium things you can do.

Once you tackle an easy, you feel motivated to do a hard and then all that’s left is easy/medium which helps you double down on the motivation.

(if your goal is losing weight - this is one aspect. diet and exercise are key - eating McDonalds while you’re on a treadmill doesn’t change the fact that you’re eating McDonalds).

3) Design a system

Life inevitably happens and the exciting new goal can quickly take a backseat. This is where your self-awareness is key.

Incentives can be powerful here.

Think about the activities/practices that give you that dopamine hit. Use those activities/practices as a reward (if you need positive reinforcement) or take them away (if you need negative reinforcement). If you aren’t sure, try both.

For example, my positive reinforcement was the trifecta of eating out (for me) - burger, fries and a shake. When I indulge, I try to only have 2/3, but the reward every time I needed finished the fruit I had in the fridge was I get to have a all 3.

Another system I put in place was making the fruit as accessible as the unhealthy items. Now my fruit is washed and cut into the perfect bite-size pieces (thank you to my wife) and is in the door of the fridge (first place I look when I open).

It is just as easy now to reach for fruit as it is to open a package/container of chips or cookies.

Last system was around accountability. I told my friends and my wife about my goals. I was prescriptive with what I needed (calling awareness to what I was doing rather than shaming) to help reinforce on the days I needed it.

Personally taking things away has never worked for me, but works really well for my wife. This is where the self-awareness (and self-reflection) is critical. Ultimately people do what they are incentivized to do, so if you are intentional in setting up incentives (and disincentives) to meet your goals, you will.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week!

PS: It took me 3 hours to write, edit, and design this newsletter. If you liked today’s post, you can help me grow by forwarding it to one person with a quick “You’ll love this newsletter. Totally worth signing up.” They can subscribe below 👇️

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✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏