Already given up on your new year’s resolution? How to not throw away a whole year
Ah, February 15th! Valentine’s Day has just passed (hopefully you were overflowing with love, with or without a valentine), you’ve finally recovered from the buzz of the holidays, and you are settled back into your daily routine. My favorite part about this time of year? The yoga studios and gyms are no longer packed and commercials for weight loss programs are long gone.
Just a short month and a half ago, we were all inspired to make changes in our lives AND some of us even promised that this year the changes would stick. Why do we make resolutions when we give them up the first time we give into our old habits? What happened to our motivation?
My theory is that it is boring and simply not realistic to stick to one vague lifestyle change for 365 days. We start with big, ambitious goals because a lot can happen in a year. We fix our mind on something and hope that we will be able to get to our goal without a strategy and without understanding the “why” that is motivating us towards making that change. This disconnect between long-term goal setting and understanding what makes the long-term goal important to YOU is a recipe for failure.
Two years ago, I set a new type of resolution for myself that I have kept ever since.
Monthly resolutions!
No, it’s not cheating! It takes just as much work as a yearly resolution, if not more. I made the resolution to set an intention at the beginning of each month to move towards large and small goals. To give you an idea of what this looks like, at the beginning of 2018, I wanted to create an overall healthier lifestyle; mind, body, and spirit. Something very abstract that I made more concrete by creating smaller goals that would get me there along the way. Hint: this is also a great method for “leaning in” to your dreams (did you read my first post?!).
Over the course of the year, it looked like this:
January – Eat vegetables at breakfast 5 times a week
February – Drink 2 liters of water a day
March – Exercise for an hour 3 times a week
April – Meditate 5 times a week
May – Go to bed and wake up one hour earlier than in April
June – No phone between the hours of 10pm and 8am
July – Change morning routine: Tongue scrapping, oil pulling, dry brush, and drinking hot lemon/honey water
August – One long journaling session each week (and enjoy summer!)
September – No fried food
October – No alcohol
November – Go out in nature twice a week
December – Positive self-talk during the holiday season (treat yo self!)
A thought behind monthly resolutions was based in the idea that it takes about a month to develop a new habit or break an old habit. By the end of each year my hope is that each resolution would stick, cultivating a sustainable lifestyle change. Setting a new intention at the beginning of every month allowed me to re-evaluate my motivations behind creating a healthier lifestyle and decide what changes I needed to make in my life from month to month. It also provided an opportunity to check-in with myself, with my desires, and to create a new way forward in getting clarity in my career path, in my relationships, and in deciding which new skills to develop to help me reach my goals.
And if you don’t keep the resolution that you set for yourself? No problem! We often learn the most when things do not go as planned.
Try it and tell me what you think in the comments on Facebook or Instagram!
