2018 was quite the year. Let’s make it a point to ensure that our New Years Resolutions have a healthy dose of self-care. This year, I won’t be setting unattainable personal goals, but rather easy to keep resolutions that set myself up for pride and accomplishment in the new year. Join me in being kind to yourself this year with these easy to keep resolutions:
- Make Healthy Choices. This is a big one. Many resolve to lose weight, eat healthier, or exercise an exorbitant amount of time. Then, they keep these for a few weeks, and ditch them quickly. Instead, build up to your big goal. Resolve, instead, to make healthy choices everyday. Park a little further away, take the stairs, grab some “lightly salted” chips, drink a bottle of water, eat an apple. These are simple, everyday choices that can affect the habits you create for yourself over the year. Soon, they won’t be active choices, they’ll be good habits, and you can keep adding good habits for the rest of the year.
- Make kind choices. You don’t have to donate money you don’t have, or go out of your way to be nice to that jerk from your office, but making one kind choice a day sets you up to make more kind choices a day…or at least will make you more aware of the kind choices people are making around you. Hold the door open, let a merging car go in front of you, smile at a stranger (not a creepy smile…just a regular one). Maybe it won’t affect anything, but… maybe it will.
- Do something for yourself. Take a selfie, eat a piece of chocolate, watch your favorite movie, just take a couple minutes out of your day to do a little something for you. You deserve it!
- Clean as you go. Don’t resolve to vaguely “get organized,” do a little bit of cleaning as you go about your day. Wipe the table after you eat. Sweep during a commercial, wash your dish immediately. All of these will make your house cleaner, and your life easier!
- Be creative. Take a picture, write a haiku, roleplay a character archetype you’re not familiar with, paint your own tabletop figure. Do something to exercise your creativity and stretch your brain a bit. We all get stuck in our own stagnancy every once in a while, and without a properly exercised creative muscle, it’ll be harder to pull yourself out of it.
- Contact 1 family member or friend you don’t live with every day. Many say they want to “spend time with friends/family members” but know barely anything about everyone’s schedules and plans. When your ideas fall through, it’s harder to continue planning throughout the year. Instead, resolve to contact someone every day. Shoot a text, call someone on your commute to, or home from work. Play a multiplayer game with someone you don’t usually play with. Taking baby steps towards your socializing goal makes it less daunting and more approachable.
Bookwyrm Mama 