It’s never too late to commit to a better version of you or to follow up on your New Year’s resolution ideas that might have gone by the wayside during January’s madness. Whatever the reason, the following tips will give you a solid ground to start running towards those goals again.
Remember that unique new year’s resolutions are not necessarily meant to be accomplished alone, so if you want to learn a new language or keep a tidier, cleaner house, getting some help is perfectly normal.
1. Eat more healthy food, but less food in general
The key to healthier eating is not making a harsh, drastic change that you’ll probably reject completely in a few days. Sheer willpower is a good thing to have, of course, but nutrition is built upon small, easy-to-pick-up habits that you can develop into a full-blown lifestyle down the line.
A good tip is to pick a day of the week to have a well-planned healthy diet all day. After a couple of weeks, make it two days, then three, and soon your whole week will have you eating healthy meals.
2. Spend less time using social media
The fact that using our smartphones disconnects us from the “now” is a well-known, often repeated piece of information, but when do we really stop using them? Just like the small increments idea above, you can try new activities each week and not share them online. Instead, focus on what you’re enjoying and why.
The secret is to untangle your enjoyment of different experiences from the easy rush that social media reactions offer. The more you love what you do, the easier it gets!
3. Pick up more active hobbies
“Going to the gym” is perhaps the most common resolution that people make every year, and the first to be dropped as well. The key to a more active lifestyle is to foster a love for more physically demanding hobbies, such as dancing, gardening, or even camping. That way you’ll feel motivated to have a stronger body and a more fit condition while retaining a sense of fun and autonomy that’s absent when you just force yourself to grind away at the gym.
If dancing’s not your thing, will hiking convince you? If not gardening, how about learning a martial art? Don’t think about these hobbies like a set-in-stone commitment, it’s all about experimenting!
4. Read more
There are many proven benefits to reading as a habit, and even though the average American read 12 books in 2018 according to the Pew Research Center, we can do a lot better than that. How about making a list of the classics you’ve never gotten around to reading? Or, instead of fiction, picking a subject you’re interested in and reading all the books related to it that you can get your hands on?
You can even pair this up with similar resolutions, such as learning something new everyday by reading more scientific articles, for example. You can never read too much.
5. Learn a new skill
You have the whole year to become adept at a new skill, why not take the chance? Drawing, coding, photography, cooking or carpentry, to name a few, dominating a new skill can open up many doors for you, from career opportunities to socialize with people who share these interests, and of course, the pleasure of doing something from the ground up by yourself.
Search for classes or seminars close to you, or if you prefer learning at your own pace, there are many internet platforms that offer lessons on every subject you can imagine, which you can take over and over until you feel comfortable enough to take the next lesson.
As you can see, the secret is to draw up simple resolutions that can have bigger and more complex effects in your life as time goes on. It’s never too late to pick up (or slightly modify) your New Year’s resolutions, so get to them when you can!
