New Year’s Resolutions are funny. The thing is, no matter how seriously you tell yourself, “This year, I am going to ____________,” it doesn’t work. You can’t make anything happen just by saying that it will. Resolve disappears quickly.
Can we call them “New Year’s Goals” instead? Somehow, that makes them seem so much more feasible. After all, you don’t just muster up your strength and promise yourself that you will meet a goal. You have to think about how to reach it! Also, I think it’s important not to set too many goals at once. As the saying goes, “When everything is important, nothing is important.” Whether you need to get things done during a single day or over an entire year, setting just a few goals can help you remember them and get excited about reaching them!
For this year, I (somewhat arbitrarily) decided on three goals:
- Knit myself this sweater (I’m so excited! My sister and I are planning to go yarn shopping on Saturday.)
- Learn how to French-braid my own hair (I’ve always been too lazy to learn how to do it well.)
- Lose weight (For goals like this, it’s important to have an actual number in mind!)
But how do we reach these goals? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m guilty of lazily resolving to “do better next time” but then falling back on my old habits because I didn’t plan. As the year progresses, I’ll share the ways I’m trying to reach my goals and whether or not they work.
For now, here’s the game plan:
- I’m super excited and can’t wait to wear the sweater, so hopefully it won’t be too hard to work toward this goal!
- Once a week, I’m going to braid my hair for practice. (I need to have some sort of system to track whether or not I actually do it.) This is a picture from a few days ago. I French-braided around my head with the “tail” end hanging over one shoulder, but I didn’t like how it looked, so I wrapped the “tail” end back around, tucked it under the rest of the hair, and pinned it.
- I’ll get back to you on this one! I’ve been eating oatmeal for breakfast on most days for a while now and not eating much dairy, which I plan to continue (besides having ice cream occasionally, of course). Breaking that ice cream addiction is another story… as is escaping my sweet tooth in general…
What goals are you setting this year, and how do you plan to reach them?
Julia
