Abandon Your New Year’s Resolution

Do This Instead

As you began a new year, you may feel like you want to take on a big challenge. You may have an ambitious goal that you wanted to achieve. A lot of people make a New Year’s resolution. I think the most popular are wanting to lose weight and wanting to stop smoking. Exercise is top of mind for many.  All kinds of self-improvement goals are popular. Maybe you want to travel more or spend more time with your family.  Some of you may have decided this is the year you’ll find true love.

There are a lot of statistics out there about New Year’s Resolutions. I wish I could say the news is good but the truth is that most of us don’t keep our resolutions past the first month or two. By the end of the year, less than 10% of us have made our resolutions a reality.

A lot of us don’t even bother with New Year’s resolutions any more. If they don’t really get done, why bother, right? I used to set bigger New Year’s Resolutions and then I’d get mad at myself for not following through.  Typically my idea was to lose weight. I really wanted to get rid of those same 15 lbs—year after year.  I might have had an initial win but then I’d fall off the wagon and gain back what I’d lost. It was frustrating and I felt defeated. In my mind, dieting felt like deprivation and deprivation has never been my thing.

A few years ago, I started thinking about the new year very differently.  Instead of resolving to do something, I thought about how I wanted to be that year. I gotta tell you, it changed everything because how I wanted to be was anchored deep inside myself. It was a yearning that was true to my inner core.

I put a funny spin on it to share with family and friends making my New Year’s Resolution a bit of a joke with them but I have to say I gave voice to my truth that year. I had greater clarity every week about how I wanted to spend my time and what things I would say yes to. The real gem was that I could say no to things that didn’t fit with how I wanted to be and I knew I was making the right choice.

That first year when I ditched the resolution part of New Year’s and gave voice to how I wanted to be turned out to be very gratifying. At the start of the year, when friends and family went around the table sharing their New Year’s Resolutions, I said my resolution was to work very hard on drinking more fine wine. We all laughed together.  My friends wanted to clone my resolution for themselves and everyone volunteered to help me achieve my ambitious plan. .My resolution was really a metaphor for drinking in the beauty and wonder of my life and saying no to the swill I had been consuming in great quantity.

I decided I wanted to notice and appreciate the finer things in my life that were right in front of me. I had gotten so busy doing things that I wasn’t seeing the wonder all around me. Instead, it felt like I was a hamster running madly on a wheel, going nowhere fast. When I focused on being instead of doing, time slowed down and I could catch my breath. I realized that I had been consumed with doing the same old stuff without any thought or intention.

When I realized certain things didn’t align with my true desire, I stopped doing them. That freed up a lot of time on my calendar. I was really upgrading the things that took my energy. It was a gift I was giving myself. There was no feeling of deprivation. In fact, I smiled whenever people brought up the subject of new years resolutions. I was able to say I overachieved mine.

How do you want to be in this year? There are so many words that could describe the kind of year you want to experience.

Adventurous

Authentic

Abundant

Balanced

Courageous

Generous

Creative

Connected

Energetic

Fulfilled

Healthy

Healed

Kind

Joyful

Gracious

Optimistic

Relaxed

Wellness

Wisdom

Welcoming

Let’s take a look at some of these words and how you might start thinking about them. Do you want to be more relaxed? What would that look like in terms of your day and your schedule? What would you need to change so you could treat yourself to relaxation?  How would your home reflect your new relaxed point of view?

The answers are different for everyone but if you want to feel relaxed you might say yes to a good night of sleep and all the bedtime rituals that could help you fall asleep and stay asleep. You might schedule a weekly body massage. In the morning, you might want to adopt a routine to center yourself.

Let’s think about your physical surroundings. Homes filled with clutter are not relaxing so you’d want to clear things out. This is especially true in your bedroom. Things that are broken and don’t work right just add to stress so you’d want to upgrade or do some maintenance where needed at your home.  Creating a master bath that’s a spa experience is a popular idea that would certainly fit with this intention.

Perhaps you’re already feeling relaxed. What you’re craving is adventure. How would that look in your life? Would you go to new places? Would you change up your routine each week? Would you join a club or a class about something that interests you? If travel is your idea of adventure, does your home support a travel lifestyle? In other words, can you lock it and go without a lot of planning?

Maybe deep in your heart, what you really want for your year is more optimism. There’s a lot of negative energy in the world.  It’s easy to get anxious and expect the worst to happen when you hear the news every day. If you wanted to be more optimistic, you might want to start and end each day with meditation or prayer. You might want to paint your walls a brighter color and play plenty of upbeat music in your car and at home. You’d probably benefit from saying no to things that make you feel depleted. You might start recognizing your own thought patterns and choosing positive thoughts over negative ones. Surrounding yourself with positive people is a great way to boost your optimism.

What words resonate with you right now? Listen to the truth inside yourself. Those words hold clues to how you want to be this year. When a word captivates you, listen and believe. That word holds an important intention and that intention will change the way you experience the year ahead.

I’ve created an interesting tool that will help you map out how your one intention could permeate all areas of your life this year. It will help you look at yourself, the important others in your life, your home, your work, and your community. Just think how could one intention could guide you in all of these areas of your life. If you think this could lead you to some new discoveries and you’re interested in changing things up from the New Year’s Resolutions of your past, I invite you to download this tool.

We all deserve a year that renews our energy and how we greet each day. As we design our second half, there’s a lot of upheaval. We’re not in control of so many things but we can be in control of our intentions. We can be true to ourselves by giving voice to that intention and finding ways to express it within ourselves, with others, both at home and at work, and in our communities. I promise you this will be a lot more fulfilling than your typical new years resolution. It will be more fulfilling than going through the year aimlessly.