A New YEAR Resolution

By Lauren

Happy New Year! I must admit I love New Year’s Resolutions. They give me a renewed sense of purpose and I tend to go all in for most of my resolutions. One year, I did a clean eating program for the month of January that cut out all types of things (sugar, cheese, breads—basically all the things you gorge on during the holidays). Another year, I did a run streak—running every day throughout January, no matter how I felt or what the weather was like.

Like I said, I love resolutions, but man—do I suck at keeping them! Like so many people, I do well for several weeks, following through and meeting many short-term goals. However, a few months in, I’m back to my old habits and often have no recollection of what my resolutions even were!

As 2016 rolled to a close, I started contemplating my resolutions, coming up with my usual grand plans—eat healthy, run more, do this, lose weight, be happier, etc., etc. However, when I sat down to write them out, I realized that this year I wanted more. I want to do better this year. I didn’t want to spend January living a different life than the rest of the year. This year I want consistency. So, while I still want to achieve all those other grand lofty goals, I decided to use an over-arching theme for my resolutions this year and put at the top of my goals: be consistent.

Of course, my goal to be consistent can easily go by the wayside—just like all my other resolutions have—without a plan of attack. So, I spent a few hours last night putting together a couple consistency fail-safes:

Automated iPhone Alarms

I pulled up my calendar app in my iPhone and scrolled through each month adding alarms/reminders for the 1^st of each month that say CONSISTENCY. I also sprinkled a few other days throughout the year with random dates/times. I don’t want to allow myself to get so swept up that I forget my goal for this year. Since I am your average twenty-something, and rarely leave home without my phone, installing a few alarms to keep it at the forefront of my mind should be helpful throughout the year.

Write it out

While I am far-too attached to my iPhone, and tend to keep many important things in digital form, I am still a sucker for a physical pen and paper planner. Checklists and crossing out to-do lists are immensely satisfying for me.  In my job, I spend the first 15 minutes of my day writing out my to-do lists—one for the day as well as keeping a running checklist for the week. Since crossing out a task and deadlines highly motivate me, I decided to apply this tactic to my resolutions this year. I am buying a physical planner to track my resolutions and highlighting short term goals and targets to keep them ever mindful (this also has the added bonus of giving me an excuse to shop for a new planner—since, as I said, I am a sucker for a good planner).

I’m looking forward to 2017 and hoping this will be the year my resolutions last ALL YEAR, not just January. What about you?