Ask a Therapist - Forging Your Own Path

When we ground ourselves in the importance of the habit or the importance of the goal, and then communicate that importance, "Hey, can you help me with this change I'm trying to make?" Now it's something that you're doing with me, or even you're just helping me to do. That way you get buy-in from the people in your household. (subtle groovy music) Hi, I'm Ryan, I'm a therapist with Headspace, and this is "Ask a Therapist", and our question today comes from Arthur, who asks a New Year's resolution question. The question is, "I've set some personal goals and resolutions for the coming year, but I don't always feel that they are supported or shared by my household. How do I maintain consistency and focus on my own path, which might not align with my family's?" Well, Arthur, first I wanna commend you for knowing that sometimes you have goals in the first place. Sometimes that's the hardest place. We can slip into just whatever feels natural and whatever feels normal in our household, and kind of continue on from there, so the fact that you wanna set some goals that might differ from what the house tends to do is a good thing. In terms of maintaining your consistency and focus, that's a challenge that a lot of people experience. Something I can relate to myself when I've tried to do exercise in the house, my 9-year-old daughter wants to play too. She wants to climb all over me, so that can make it hard to feel like, oh, I wanna be able to work out here, but I also don't wanna have to wake up before you're awake to be able to do that. So, that's where we find opportunities to compromise, and in terms of working with my 9-year-old daughter, there's a tough conversation in there. Maybe it's about distracting her, maybe it's about incorporating her, "Hey, do you wanna do this exercise with me? Hey, do you wanna do yoga with me?" Maybe it's about finding time when she's at school, so there is a little bit of compromise that has to happen, but when we ground ourselves in the importance of the habit or the importance of the goal, and then communicate that importance to, for example, the members of our household, then we get buy-in from them, right? If your daughter wakes up and sees you working out in the morning, that's new and confusing, and it might just be something that she wants to join in on, but if there's been a conversation of, "Hey, tomorrow I'm starting a new workout routine, when you come downstairs, I might be lifting weights in the living room. This is very important to me, I'm gonna set a timer, as soon as that timer goes off, we can play and I'm all yours." Conversely, if you don't get that buy-in, well that's where we have to pivot and find where our own opportunities exist. Maybe...