January, along with a new year, this month always brings a wave of self-loathing as ad campaigns and friends alike are bombarding us with messages about losing weight and becoming a new person for the year. Instead, this year, swap out a healthier, more positive resolution that you can actually achieve.
Drink More Water
There’s so many options that are easier than water, but water is the best option for a drink. Try delaying your morning coffee to drink a glass of water first or just kick soda to the curb for a bit.
Produce Less Waste
Choose something that you currently use and toss often and replace it with a reusable version to produce less waste in the new year.
—> If you’re a frappuccino person, invest in a hard plastic or metal straw that will replace all those Starbucks ones.
—> If you’re still buying bottled water, swap to a reusable bottle instead.
—> If you use a lot of grocery bags, start putting totes in your car to take into the store instead.
—> If you have menstrual cycles, consider trying out a menstrual cup to replace disposable tampons and pads.
Start small and replace one thing and after a couple weeks of thinking about it, then it’ll become second nature to tote around your reusable, waste-free version. Then, replace something else and move towards a less-waste lifestyle!
Take Time for Yourself
Choose a hobby or habit to start integrating for yourself. This might be the gym, but it can also be some morning stretches for your sore hips, some journaling to pour out anxious thoughts, or reading to bask in a fictional realm. Start scheduling a 15 minute session daily in the morning or evening that you spend on yourself in this activity to practice a bit more self-care in 2019.
Appreciate Your Friends
So often, it’s not until tragedy strikes that we think about how our friends matter to us. Instead, make it a resolution to appreciate them now.
—> Write out postcards to all your close friends as a surprise in their mailbox that isn’t a bill!
—> Write a letter to one person a week telling them about how they’ve impacted your life. It’s so rare we pause to tell people how important they are.
—> Give someone a call every Sunday (or whenever works) just to chat. Consider calling a relative that you’ve grown apart from since leaving home or moving away.
—> Start pen-paling with a friend or family member weekly (or whenever works) to really talk to each other. The practice of writing it out and really reading is a way to pay close attention to what you’re taking in from them.
—> Set up a recurring coffee date with a friend or your friend group to make sure you’re carving out time for each other in the busy-ness of life.
—> Pick up someone’s favorite chocolate bar (or coffee or muffin or whatever) and bring it into the office on Monday. Try this each week and watch how happy you make people just with this little gesture.
De-Clutter
Often times, we don’t do a deep clean until it’s time to move out of the dorms again or a closet implodes. Instead, start doing a weekly or monthly project to go through different stockpiles in your home to clear out unused item and donate or sell them to someone who will use them.
It’s easy to get pulled into the push to start hitting the gym and dieting in January, but a spur of the moment diet brought on by guilt isn’t healthy or helpful. Instead, try a resolution that positive and healthy and realistic, because a failed resolution doesn’t accomplish anything.
But being a little kinder, to yourself or your friend or the world, can never hurt.