At New Year I made the best resolution-based decision I have ever made. I decided not to make any changes until February.
This year I sort of didn't have a choice; I had my dissertation hand in last Friday (IT'S OVERRRRR!!) and so I was pretty much busy all of January. January has been one of those neglect-all-jobs-which-aren't-entirely-necessary sort of months (RIP my washing bin) and so the idea of having to think about new goals and routines was just not going to happen. But having had this month I actually think having January off is a really good idea. After all, you spend a big chunk of December just indulging and building up terrible habits, by going straight from indulgence to good behaviour you are setting yourself up for failure. I think next year I'm going to do the same again, spend January returning to normality and restoring old habits and then add in some new habits in February. That way everything is a little bit more manageable and even if you do fail at keeping your resolutions it will at least look like you lasted a month longer than everyone else! Success!
So, January is almost over and I've been spending my new found freedom thinking about goals and what I want out of this year. I've never really had new years resolutions because I think they're kind of ineffective. Firstly, they are too vague to change anything. By aiming to 'be more healthy' you're not really setting any goals which you can achieve because it's such a macro goal. It's a lot better to set a goal like 'go to yoga three times a week" because you can actually do or not do this. Secondly, it is way too easy to give up on new years resolutions. If I set the lofty goal of 'being more healthy' and then have a cheeky take away a couple of weeks in that's me done, resolution broken. No more pressure to stick to a resolution so I might as well eat allll the food!!!
This year I've decided to try something a bit new which I'm hoping will work. I've written a list of tasks and goals that I want to accomplish this year. I am then going to choose one a week and try and achieve it. They range from really practical things like 'create a binder of important documents' to fun things I want to do like 'go to aerial yoga' or things I want to change about my life like 'find an organic skincare product which works for me'. My only requirement is that it's achievable in a week.
I'm really looking forward to this sort of goal setting because I think I can actually achieve something this way. If I fail at one of my weekly goals, that kind of sucks but it's completely isolated from the next week's goal. The fact I ate some chicken on a 'try-meatless' week doesn't stop me from achieving at my 'do my taxes' week.
I've been busy writing and planning this week so I'm hoping to start my goals soon. I will be sharing on the blog so you can follow along.
So what do you think? Is anyone else doing mini-resolutions this year? Do you have any suggestions for what some of mine should be? I'm all ears!
