Call me hopelessly ambitious, but I write New Year’s resolutions – and I’m crushing them this year. Whether you believe in God, or the Law of Attraction, or nothing at all, you can’t fight with the fact that our words are powerful. Whether I’m speaking to myself or others, I am emitting an energy and subjecting them to my words. So for 2020, I’ve decided to only speak life over myself and others, and follow through with the words I am proclaiming over myself. It’s exciting, it’s powerful, and I’m ready – until it’s 6am Monday morning and my alarm is practically screaming at me to get up. Ten more minutes I tell her as I press the snooze button, and roll over to squeeze in a few more moments of sleep because I am so tired. It’s hard to a positive, vibrant life over yourself when the world isn’t awake yet and you have barely gotten five hours of sleep. So though I’ve decided this would be one of my resolutions this year, it unfortunately doesn’t always go as planned and definitely is not as easy as it sounds. But don’t be discouraged, there are ways to actually accomplish your goals and resolutions this year.
(Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash)
- Give each month a “theme”. If you’re like me and you wrote a list of about twenty resolutions, we have to admit that it’s highly unlikely to accomplish all twenty. Not only is it unlikely, but it is also extremely difficult to change one’s personality and habits, especially in twenty different ways. What you can do though, is set a focus for each month. Trying to be a better person this year? Focus on kindness during the month of January. Explore all the different ways for you to be kind, and actually put it into practice. By solely focusing all your energy on this one resolution, you are likely to adapt kind behaviour since it is constantly on your mind. If you are trying to save up for a trip, dedicate a month to acquiring financially savvy skills. In the month of February, you can dedicate time to budget, discover ways to save money, and elimate costs that might not actually be necessary to you. By focusing on only your finances during this month, you will acquire financially strong skills that you will be able to take with you throughout the year. Not only that, you’ll also be kind. Having acquired the personality trait of kindness and financial skills, you will have accomplished two of your resolutions by February. The list continues on throughout the month – focus on healthy eating in March, go outside more in April, spend time with your family in June, etc. By sticking to this schedule, you will have accomplished 12 of your resolutions and will be so much closer to the person you are designing yourself to be.
- Be specific. I find it funny when I ask others what their New Year’s resolutions are and they respond with something so vague like I want to be healthier. I’m sure my bafflement comes out through my face, and I can’t help but ask what they mean. “Are you changing your eating habits? Are you eating only plant-based? WIll you be exercising more? Will you be adjusting your sleep schedule?” I ask, sometimes aloud. Though the questions may catch them off guard at first, since they clearly show they haven’t put that much thought into it, they then go on to take some time to analyze their definition of healthy. My point is – you can’t become something if you don’t even know what that looks like. If you want to write a book in 2020, you have to tell yourself by when. Give yourself a deadline, or five. Have a research done by February, and a draft done by March. Schedule writing time on Monday nights so you know that you will be focused on your writing during that time. Get specific.
- Write down your why. Writing out our twenty plus resolutions is great and all, but I can’t be the only one who takes a look back at them and feels an overwhelming sensation of stress. Resolutions and goals can seem like more items on the to-do list, and though we had all the good intentions in the world when writing them, sometimes they won’t actually serve us in the ways we originally thought it would. For example, as I wrote out my list of things I’d like to change about myself and my life in the next year, I wrote “transition to veganism”. Writing it felt empowering, exciting. To know that I would eventually adapt to a strict plant based diet gave me a sensation of anticipated accomplishment. As I went through my whys, however, I couldn’t quiet put my finger on the reason for becoming vegan. I’m already vegetarian and eat extremely clean, so to add more restrictions to my life only seemed like unnecessary trouble. I couldn’t think of any good reason to become vegan other than to say that I was vegan, and that is not reason enough. We write resolutions and goals because we want to improve ourselves, for our own lives, and for our loved ones around us, but to overwhelm ourselves with resolutions that do not add to this genuine craving of self-improvement, adds only more damage.
Becoming the best versions of ourselves and living our best lives is absolutely great and all, but it definitely isn’t worth our sanity. Transitioning into who you are meant to be shouldn’t be stressful or hard, but rather a beautiful process as you grow and develop throughout your time. So I hope you crush your goals this year. All of them. All of the ones that bring you joy and love and excitement. I hope you love your skin by the end of the year, and learned how to play that guitar. With a good reason why, a specific plan, and one month at a time, you can do it all, and I’m already so proud of you!