Haaaaappy New Year!! What’s that you say? It’s no longer the NEW year?  it’s already March???!! Ok, Ok. You’re right. I know I’m a bit late on my New Years post, but This means I’ve basically already given you enough time to potentially make AND break your New Years resolutions.. so perhaps now is exactly the right time for a kick in the pants. And for this blog post. One of my new years resolutions was to post more blogs, and as you can I have done a rather TERRIBLE  job thus far. Because even though I WANTED to post a blog, I just wasn’t. Why hadn’t I just posted yet?? I’ll tell you why, because procrastination is just SO MUCH EASIER. And because I had FAR too many excuses, for example “There isn’t enough time, I don’t have anything to write about, I’m not inspired”…. blah, blah, blah. Procrastination is easier, but it doesn’t make me feel all that great, or very accomplished. It wasn’t until one of my friends called me out on this tonight before I felt compelled to do it. And here I am, writing this blog. hurrah. Look, here’s how it goes. If you want to achieve ANY goals, fitness or otherwise, you need constant motivators and reminders of why you started doing whatever you wanted to do in the first place. And it doesn’t hurt to be good friends with Will… Power, that is. One of the easiest ways to fail at something is to lack consistency and to lose your will power to stay on track. It is easy to fall off when you start to slack off. You stop seeing results and then you start to feel like that goal you had is now so so distant, and then you lose faith in yourself… and then… YOU GIVE UP!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!! And you give up until that next round of inspiration comes along, or you start to feel so bad about falling off the first 3 to 5 billion times, and then you decide to get back on that wagon again. Wouldn’t it just be so much better and more rewarding if you could just STAY on that WAGON?? I’m sure your results would come much sooner. I recently had the pleasure of seeing Kelly McGonigal PhD, psychology professor at Stanford, give a lecture on the subject of will power. Kelly is also the author of The Willpower Instinct, (which I am currently reading) a book about understanding and improving your will power. She offers some great insight as to why we sometimes have such a difficult time sticking to our plan even when we know sticking to the plan is going to result in the outcome we want. For example, lets say you have a goal, and if you stay on your path, you WILL reach your destination. And lets say your destination is… Hawaii and an all expense paid vacation for Life! (or some other wonderful place doing whatever you enjoy doing) But maybe that path will take you several years and involve crossing the sea in a paddle boat. This seems rather challenging and quite tedious.. but just think how great it will be when you finally get there??!! However,  There are so many detours along the way, and some that offer a less attractive destination, but a more immediate and easier route… like an hour drive that will take you to small mid-western town , and once you get there you can sit on a front porch but the catch is you have to shovel manuer for the rest of your days.  Or if you go a few more miles on your journey you might make it to popular destination such as Six Flags in Eureka MO, which is clearly more appealing that shoveling manuer, but less appealing still to an endless paradise. (Now I know, Six Flags is fun, and I have many great memories of going there as a kid, but let’s also consider summer in the midwest… so HOT, so HUMID.. and THOSE LINES Though.) So let’s not get distracted by the short term or easy solutions that present themselves in the now, but instead think about your overall goal that you are working toward. So whether it is sticking to a healthy eating plan, making it to the gym 3 times a week like you said you would… or writing this blog… don’t let your excuses get in the way! Find out why you may be sabotaging your own success and learn to GET OUT of your OWN way. Let’s get better at that follow through and I hope to see you at your destination.