New Year's Resolutions - and how to make them stick - by Bernardo Moya
Bernardo Moya gives you some ideas for New Year's Resolutions - and some advice on sticking to them.
Make your New Year go with a bang!
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It might only be a number, or a date in the diary, but New Year's Eve is a great time to lock those New Year's Resolutions into place.
After all, with the days lengthening, and the future having a whole new number attached to it, it does somehow feel like the right time for drawing a line under past behaviour and attitudes, and really getting things done.
Here are a few things you might want to consider, for your New Year's Resolution:
1. Spend More Time with Family and Friends - it's good for the health to spread a little bit of love, and when it comes down to it, it's what life is really all about!
2. Fit in Some Fitness - feel like you've let yourself go a little? Promising yourself more fitness pays dividends in better focus and heightened mood. Great idea!
3. Tame your Bulge - deciding to lose some weight after the Christmas binge is a great idea. A mixture of exercise and sensible eating habits will do it for most people. Aim to succeed.
4. Quit Smoking - if you're a victim of the dirty habit, maybe it's time to kick it for good. Smoking ages the skin, harms health, restricts oxygen to the brain and causes cancer. But you know that already... so maybe it's time to quit smoking today.
5. Enjoy Life More - take time to appreciate life. There is music in the sound of the rain if you listen hard enough, just as much as there is delight in the sunlight. Take time to discover the magic.
6. Quit Drinking - or cut down. Drink in moderation can be good for the body, to relax you. Red wine in small amounts has been shown to be good for the heart. Just make sure you're in charge of it, and not the other way round.
7. Get Out of Debt - this is a lesson for the whole country. Maintain a tight grip on your spending, and buy those things that are going to be generative rather than draining. Ask yourself on the major spending decisions: is this thing I'm buying now an investment? Will it pay me back time and again? If so, then that's a pretty good reason to go for it!
8. Learn Something New - opening your mind to new ideas and new ways of thinking will open doorways to further possibilities. Training, discovering, learning and acquiring new skills will give you greater competency and flexibility in the year ahead.
9. Help Others - taking time to help others is not only a good in itself. Having the ability to help others - as well as making the skills and the time - will pay you back emotionally in so many ways.
10. Get Organized - having a sense of direction and what you want to achieve this year, getting your "ducks lined up" will make your aims so more easy to achieve.
Some Quick Resolution Tips
One thing at a time... It helps to pick on only one resolution for the year - and to approach the change with a real sense of pleasure and joy in your heart at what a positive difference it will make to your life.
Go forwards, not backwards... Going back and revisiting previous "failed" resolutions can be counter-productive, unless you can find a new way in. If you tried giving up smoking previously with patches, then look for another method. There is always something else you can try!
Planning helps... Plan well ahead of time what you want to do. Again, for smoking, don't wake up suddenly on New Year's Day, "gasping for a fag", without preparation. That way lies horrendous self-recrimination and "failure". Give yourself a fighting chance by preparing your course of action ahead of time, or even setting a date in the New Year when you will take the bull by the horns.
Make big pictures... When you decide on something you want, the fire that is in your belly will usually come from making that desired picture bigger, brighter, detailed and colourful. Take time to focus on what you want day in and day out. Set your course so that you are steering towards the big picture - it will remind you where you are heading.
Chunk it down... make each task achievable by going into the detail of how you will do it. A general feeling that you're going to lose weight is not giving your unconscious the signal it needs to know what to do. A half kilo a week, or a promise to do a run every day, right the way down to how you will find the time will make it much more real to you.
Goals and Support... It might help to set goals, and it might also help to let others around you know what you are doing. Some scientific evidence suggests that women are more successful at sticking to resolutions when they feel supported by friends and family. The same study also suggests that men have greater success at sticking to it when they set clear goals to aim for. But why stick to gender stereotypes? Doing both might work for you even better!
Finally - allow the change to bed in. There might well be slips and times when you don't achieve your goals. That is not failure. That is feedback. If you fall off the bike, get back on it again!
That's it. Best of luck and have a fantastic New Year!
