I do not believe in New Year’s resolutions, mostly because there are not many people I have met who have stuck to their resolutions. I personally do not create resolutions for the New Year because, like many, I do not keep them up for more than four months at a time. Instead, I make goals. I know, resolutions are basically goals, but they are different, too. Resolutions are like realizations that you want to act upon. They are supposedly ongoing for the entire year, but those resolutions are hard to keep up that long. With life constantly changing, keeping a single resolution seems less and less practical. Creating a long term goal, and then creating shorter term goals to achieve the greater, has become a much more successful way for me to achieve what could have been resolutions. Here are some pretty common resolutions and how they can be broken down to achieve the greater goal:
1. Live Healthy
The biggest cliche, vowing to eat clean and work out a certain amount of days per week, is one of the harder resolutions to keep throughout the year. It is difficult to motivate yourself to keep going to the gym. Here is my suggestion: create weekly goals for yourself. Every week is a little different schedule-wise for everyone. It can sometimes be hard to go to the gym or work out as many times as you set at the beginning of the year. Instead, make goals based on the schedule for the week. Aim for the maximum amount of time that you can work out that fits with the important events of your week.
For eating healthy, plan in advance. It is much easier to eat healthy when you have your meals planned out. No, this does not necessarily mean weekly meal prep, but knowing where you are eating and balancing out your meals daily can help. Calorie tracking is an option, and it has become bigger in health trends.
2. Stop Procrastinating
We have all been there. Procrastinating is something everyone is guilty of, and we don't always know how to go about fixing this flaw. For a while, you can keep it up, but then it gets tiring, and you have no break. My way of going about this is being more organized. By planning, I allow myself to procrastinate for a little bit, but I know that I have a comfortable amount of time to complete tasks. By doing so, I have the ability to put in the amount of work required while giving myself time to relax for a little bit.
I find the best way to plan is to do it month by month. You can block out the most important and biggest events for the month and readjust as more things come in. It can become hectic when commitments rush at you all at once, but if you have an organized schedule, it will be a lot easier to keep your head and focus.
3. Give Back More
I believe that this should be the most important resolution or goal to make. Many of us grow up with such fortune, having roofs over our heads, food on the table, and someone to come home to and rely on. You have things that are unnecessary, things that are wants instead of needs. Often, people find the holidays to be a time to give back as they get more. I think that giving and charity can be a year-round event.
Now, it is quite easy to find ways to give back. Many organizations have become creative in how they receive donations. Some organizations created monthly donation subscriptions, charging your bank account anywhere from one to twenty dollars a month. There are also organizations that use internet interactions in the form of quizzes to donate 10 grains of rice for every question you answer correctly. You can find this website here. Other organizations allow you to buy animals for families in third world countries, helping them stabilize their incomes. You can find this organization here.
By breaking up a resolution into a series of goals, a resolution does not seem to be such a hard thing to conquer. Eventually, those achieved goals can become a lifestyle, no longer a long-running resolution or goal. Good luck to you all, and happy New Year!
