Making New Year’s resolutions is easy. Keeping them is another story. When January 1 rolls around — and once the New Year’s Eve hangover wears off — we start drinking the “new year, new you” kool-aid, believing that we can make big time changes in our lives. We start off so positive, and yet.
A 2015 study from U.S. News and World Report found that 80 percent of resolutions fail by the second week of February. The common culprit? We doom ourselves by setting lofty, unrealistic goals; then when we realize the goal is tougher than we’d thought, we get discouraged and fall back into bad habits.
When it comes to health and fitness resolutions, vanity is often the driving motivator. Lose 25 pounds, get six-pack abs, look better in a bikini. But if working out and dieting makes you miserable, will the vision of yourself in your head be enough to make you stick with the habit?
The folks at Blink Fitness argue that investing in the psychological benefits of exercise is the best way to ensure you’ll keep up your workout routine. The idea is if you find small ways to challenge yourself and make fitness more fun, then you’ll do it more and have a better chance of reaching your goals.
“Since the beginning, our philosophy with fitness has always been to put mood above muscle,” says Ellen Roggemann, Blink’s VP of Marketing. “We know that when something makes you feel good, like exercise, you’ll keep doing it.”
If you’ve ever set foot in a Blink gym, which now has 63 locations in NYC, Philly, New Jersey and L.A., you’ve seen their tagline printed in big white letters on the walls: “Exercise isn’t just about looking good, it’s about how it makes you feel.”
With their #ResolutionHappy campaign, the gym encourages members to set small, short-term goals that will help them feel more enthusiastic about working out. In a video for the campaign, members talk about setting tiny motivators, like “I’ll make a bomb playlist,” or “I’ll do five minutes more.”
Blink invites folks to literally “shred” their unrealistic goals in favor of these micro-resolutions: On Monday, January 8 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., the brand is hosting a party at their Bryant Park location called The Great New Year’s Resolution Shred. There will be paper shredders at the gym, a photobooth, Blink swag, membership and personal training session giveaways, and the chance to talk with Blink trainers (known as Mood Lifters).
How will you modify your New Year’s resolutions to set yourself up for success?
