Building a Healthy Year - August Aim
Building a Healthy Year - August Aim
Everyone thinks of January as the start of the year. For good reason, as it is month 1. But what happens to everyone around this time is a familiar story: New Year’s Resolution starts Jan 1. We hit the ground running, ideally, or sputter out of the gate. Either way, most people are rethinking their plan by February.
Let’s think about it another way. While January will always be January, it will sit at the start of the year, that is fine. But, what if we weren’t just starting a new plan in the coldest, gloomiest month of the year? What if we didn’t put so much pressure on the Jan. 1 goal and force our whole success or failure into that single resolution right at the start of the year?
This year, we have that opportunity. We all hear about planning ahead and we may even roll our eyes at the thought. But, what if we think about August and even the entire last part of this year as a chance to ramp up for next year?
That is our August Aim: Set up, get ready, establish a few smaller goals and test them out. Try some things to see how they feel, how they work and what they might look like in your plan. It’s actually quite simple: use August to aim our 2027 game plan.
This could be the difference between a frustrating start to the year and a smooth continuation of a good plan into the year. Think about all the people in January that just started doing something for the first time. Maybe they joined a gym or signed up for a class. Maybe they got some new gear and are trying it all out at the beginning of the year. Maybe this has been you in the past. Maybe this was about to be you in a few months.
Either way, imagine having a plan already up and running. Doesn’t that feel easier? There is an adage: “The best time to plant a tree is years ago, but the next best time is today.” I am paraphrasing, as I don’t know the saying well or know where it originated. But, I do appreciate it for more reasons than one.
Picture yourself in January. Would you rather be just getting started or would you rather be mid-routine with a few steps worked out along the way as you’ve run into a challenge or two before the year even started?
This can be a simple idea of: “better to start now than later”. While that is objectively true in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s more than that. I think it is about more than just “starting earlier”. It’s also about how you start and what you do to prepare for your year.
Think about it this way:
August: aim, setting up a few goals and working on even one new habit
September: refine the plan on that initial habit and possibly add another.
October: again, two months of practice, even if you want to start completely over, you still have more than two months to adjust before the first of the year is even here.
And that leads us to the next reason I like this August aim: it’s not all or nothing> If January 1 is a pass/fail, success/failure, black and white date, you are setting yourself up for a lot of pressure and a great chance of failure. You are also making the rest of the year more difficult because you’ve placed all of your eggs in one proverbial basket. Now you are either making the routine work or not. You are either successfully up and running on your plan or you have already blown the routine for the whole year before you even got a chance to get started.
Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. Spread that work out over the next few months and give yourself a running start. Not just to get started earlier and get more in sooner. But to get started smarter on a plan that fits better. You can make adjustments for the next four months, almost five months if you start early in August. You can have your plan fine-tuned and ready before the year even starts. That is a much better place to be on Jan 1 than “Am I going to make this whole thing work starting today?”
Let’s use August to aim and we can work on the rest of the year as it comes, and when that January 1 day comes around, we will be prepared, not just for the year, but with our plan already feeling like it is in place and working well.