So – how is your January? How are the resolutions going?

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Blue Monday … supposedly ‘the most depressing day of the year’. The Christmas credit card bill has arrived, all your resolutions have been broken… and you just want to hide under the duvet ’til spring. 

Now – the fact is that ‘Blue Monday’ was invented by a PR man!  Plenty of psychologists say that it doesn’t exist. They say that even talking abut it is bad for us.  But it makes a point which I think is real…. for a whole lot of people, January is the biggest failure zone of the whole year. 

We swear we’re going to change… but the resolutions don’t get kept.

The gym membership doesn’t get used.

We turn to comfort eating….

… and before too long, ‘new year new you’ has a hollow ring to it.

Well – I’m not a fan of all that ‘new year, new you’. I think that change is a process.

It doesn’t happen because the date changes, or the year changes. It happens when we’re ready to make it it happen. Success is in preparation and mindset.

When I was a nine times British taekwondo champion and I got to the day of the big fight …. it was never that big a deal.  That’s because the hard work was already done.

In Panther Taekwondo, we teach our students that before success  comes effort and work. You need to learn the basics of the art, then build from there, with vision and belief in your future success to inspire you. Master the basics first. Preparation is power.  

Whatever you set out to achieve in life, it’s the preparation you put in that makes the difference between success and failure. Competing is easy – training is hard. Success is all in the preparation and mindset.

So whatever happened to those resolutions, don’t make your January pass-fail.  It’s a month of getting ready. You won’t change your life on one day. Do the preparation – and the change won’t be that big a deal.