The New Year brings changes, and unfortunately some are out of our control. However, what about those changes that we can control?

Before starting any behavioral changes toward our well-being goals, we must examine our own mind, body and spirit and find our self-awareness. What are our feelings, motives and aspirations? We must start with the basics and ask ourselves who, what, where, when and why we want to be healthy. Once we gain self-awareness, we will be in a better place to achieve our well-being goals.

If we want to do something differently in the New Year, obviously we want to make a change and that is a good thing; however, this can be difficult at the same time. Each of us can strive to make healthy behavioral changes. We know in order to make any sort of behavioral change, it must take a certain amount of self-control, which can be somewhat stressful. With that said, maybe this is the reason so many people cannot keep their resolutions in the New Year.

"Let’s strive to always be proactive not inactive” is a phrase I refer to in all aspects of well-being. I coined this phrase after making behavioral changes in my own life. We must be proactive towards making healthy changes. In other words, if we are inactive, we are staying in the same place. Taking steps forward means we are moving and that is a good thing!

What about those out of control things that cause us to stumble and seem to move us backwards a few steps? We put a lot on ourselves trying to attain certain things; however, it is not always an easy task. So, when we stumble, it seems like we have failed. At that point, we push ourselves further and further away from the goals we want to achieve and sometimes even give up. Let’s try and not be too hard on ourselves, rather look at it as a learning experience and start moving forward again.

By Debra Staton, Wellness Coordinator for the Arkansas Health Network