A Fresh Take On New Year’s

First and foremost, Happy New Year!!

Now, I shouldn’t say this is a completely new idea, because I’ve been doing it the past couple of years. But it’s something different from the norm, or at least I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it.

New Year’s Day is January 1, and my birthday is January 30. So rather than give in to all the hype that is the media blitz about goals and resolutions at this time of year, I allow myself some grace. During the month of December, I mull over what it is I want to achieve in the new year, some of which I implement on the 1st and some I delay until MY new year, my birthday, at the end of January.

Now maybe this doesn’t work if your birthday is later in the year. Or maybe it does. Maybe you can reset when YOUR new year begins each year. Rather than put all the pressure on yourself with New Year’s resolutions on 1/1. Or maybe it doesn’t matter which day it is. Any day is a good day to make the changes you want to see.

3 Resolutions for Right Now

1. Stop Dropping the F Bomb – I never used to use this word. I hated it. I still do actually. Everything changed when I started working in a job where it was used, more often than it should be (should it ever be used at work??), and it got added to my vocabulary. I usually blame it on the fact that I work with mostly men and thus the environment welcomes it. Point is, I’ve adopted this habit (as a way of fitting in? To feel respected? That’s crazy, right?), and it bleeds into my non-work life too. And I don’t like it. So I want to stop saying it. Be more of a lady. Hopefully I’ll be respected for having a clean mouth, rather than a dirty one. So this is one of the resolutions that I’m going to start working on ASAP.
2. Track My Eating and Exercising – Of course one of my resolutions is to get healthier. I think this is on almost everyone’s resolution list, right? So come January 30, I plan to set more specific goals in an attempt to actually do this once and for all. But in the meantime, in the lead up to MY new year, I am going to track what I’m doing now. Not necessarily write down calorie counts, but what I’m eating, quantities and timing. Also if I work out. How I feel. I want to use this month as a period of reflection, to analyze more closely what I do and how it makes me feel.
3. Take Care of the [Junk] Mail Immediately – I have a very bad habit of only picking out the important stuff from my mail and stuffing the rest of the junk into a storage bin and not looking at it until I have to (aka when the bin is bursting). So my third my resolution, that I resolve to start today, is to sort and then either shred, recycle or file the mail immediately so that I don’t let it pile up. And bonus, I can use that storage bin for something else!

I’ll be back in a month to see how I made out with my pre-resolutions and to share the specific goals I’ll be setting for MY new year.

Do you make resolutions? What are they?

Many thanks and much love,
laf