As the New Year approaches, many individuals make pledges to themselves to live healthier and more productive lives. People put pressure on themselves to change some aspect of their life simply because a new year symbolizes a fresh start.
The thing is, New Year’s resolutions always start with such good intentions. So it might start by asking yourself, “how can I make 2023 the best year ever?”
And that’s the thing; there is nothing inherently wrong about setting a New Year’s resolution. It’s actually an excellent opportunity to take the time to reflect on the past year and see which aspects of your life you wish to evolve. I find it’s one of the best ways to understand why I do certain things that are simply a part of my daily routine that I might want to change.
For example, my urge to pick up my phone as soon as I wake up. I know there are more productive ways to start the day than scrolling on Instagram bright and early in the morning. However, it became such a subconscious activity that as soon as I turned off my alarm, I opened up Instagram and started scrolling.
But for me, it’s not enough just to identify the problem. I must understand why scrolling first thing when I wake up isn’t productive. So what I did was I made a list of reasons scrolling when I wake up is doing more harm than anything. My list looked like this:
- I stay in bed longer
- It doesn’t add anything positive to my day
- I lose focus on the tasks I set for myself
- My mind becomes consumed by meaningless things I see on social media
- It makes me less efficient throughout the day
Once I laid out the reasons why I shouldn’t be using my phone in the morning, it made it a lot easier for me to make the change.
In life, it’s easy to fall into a routine and be okay with things because you do them daily. But I learned that to make any goal-setting or resolutions work, I had to clearly understand why I wanted this aspect of my routine to change.
For me, the change has to make sense. I find that I won’t stick to a goal if I don’t fully understand the reason behind it.
New Year’s resolutions often rely on a specific outcome. For instance, if your goal is to lose weight, your resolution can be an arbitrary number, which can be harmful.
If one’s goal is to lose a specific amount of weight by a particular date, it puts too much pressure on the body. As a result, these types of resolutions become problematic because there is so much pressure and obligation to change this aspect of your physical appearance.
Instead, I would lay out my intentions of why I would want to lose weight and see how I can incorporate small but daily changes into my routine to achieve my desired goal without putting the pressure on myself that I need to accomplish a certain number on a scale by a specific date.
Beyond setting intentions of the why factor behind the changes, it’s productive to develop positive replacements that I can incorporate into my routine. For example, to cut back on my morning phone usage, I used a written day planner instead of the one on my phone to create a list of tasks for the day. I also made use of my five-minute journal to incorporate positivity into my morning.
The more I replaced my phone with activities that required me to be present, the more I didn’t actually desire to be on my phone. I began associating my phone usage with only when I finished specific tasks for school to limit that connection even further.
Regardless of your goals for the new year, one thing you must keep in mind is consistency. If you aren’t consistent, your changes will not stick. Consistency is vital for success in your resolutions. If you want your resolution to stick, you have to make that long-term commitment to yourself to keep that sustained effort in action throughout the year. Consistency ensures that you’re holding yourself accountable each and every day to bring you one step closer to reaching your goals.