February is a wakeup call. After a month of dreamy delusions, most people quit fitness, dieting and other methods of their desired self-improvement only to fall back into old habits. This is the way of nature, the rhythm on which Planet Fitness’ business model depends. But you need not be constrained by the patterns of nature, nor must you fall into the same pitfalls as everyone else. It is 2020, a new decade, and big changes are coming. Make yourself a part of that change. Put on some pants, go outside, move around. I know it can be tough to motivate yourself, but it is only a matter of mindset. And with the right attitude, February could be easy.

The key to a successful project of self-improvement is mindset. Do not frame your resolution in terms of absolute success or failure. Thinking in this way often ensures the latter. Many diets have been abandoned after a single cheat meal, and fitness plans often die after just a week out of the gym. This is because of the binary mindset taken towards self-improvement– specific failure, in this mindset, equates to total failure. It is much easier to justify quitting a diet when, in your head, you have already failed.

This subconscious copout is reinforced by social media. Online you see the highs without the lows, which warps your image of reality and your own progress. On a fitness Instagram page, you see intense workouts, healthy meals, and gorgeous bodies. What you see is the huge rift between where you are and where you want to be. But they had failures too, you just do not see them. The secret to success is the ability to accumulate failures without abandoning your goals. I fail constantly, and I will not pretend that these failures do not eat away at my insides like battery acid, every one of them. But you have to get back on the horse. You have to learn not to mistake one day for the rest of your life. In the real world you do not have success or failure. You just have a spectrum of progress. Just because you have temporarily slipped down on that spectrum does not give you an excuse to completely neglect it.

In a recent article, Lauren Alley outlines the case for a “Growth Mindset,” reiterating similar sentiments. It’s not only about the growth mindset to me though, it’s about pragmatics. In other words, you shouldn’t feel bad about failing to succeed on your first try, but you also need to be realistic about your limitations.

So here is the hard truth: If you say that you are going to get up at 6 am every morning, go run for an hour, eat quinoa and spinach all day, and stick to it, you are lying to yourself. You are also lying to yourself if you think that is a reasonable endpoint– you would be miserable if you did that for even a week.

Don’t lie to yourself, don’t set unreasonable goals, stop making excuses. Make 2020 the year of no more b——-. Just do it. Every day you get better, you have fulfilled your resolution. If you fail today, then succeed tomorrow. If you fail all week, then succeed next week. You should not let the lazy part of your brain have any slack, because any time you feed it it just gets hungrier. Every day that you put off starting makes it harder to dig yourself out of that hole. But every day afterward just gets easier.