Did you make any New Years resolutions?
With everyone around me making goals and resolutions – I decided I needed to do the same thing – but differently. I realized that I often fail at my goals because I’m too vague. For instance, if I put down “get healthy” as a goal, well what the heck does that mean? Cooking better? Exercise? So, I decided to put down reasons next to my goals and that has helped me a great deal! I decided to make it clear and wrote down why I wanted to get healthy. I named concrete things like sleep better, walk up the stairs without dying or don’t eat after 8pm. Specifics help you see the things you need to work on with more clarity.
Apparently, according to some real smarty pants people, this step helps motivate long term behavior. Who knew?!
I also decided to make a list (don’t scoff!) of the things that make me smile. Cheesy I know (pun very intended). One item on this list is, I decided that I wanted to wish every single one of my Facebook friends happy birthday. So, every day, I check the Facebook calendar and I do just that. Yes, it’s corny – but I really like making people feel a tiny bit special on the day of their birth. I put this on my resolution list 4 years ago and continue to do this – faithfully for all 1,300 of them! You can add things to this list like making a happy playlist, find a good podcast, a Netflix binge or a good book.
A great book on this VERY topic is The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. On the book cover it states “why I spent a year trying to sing in the morning, clean my closets, fight right, read Aristotle and generally have more fun”. Well, sign me up for some of that! I really liked this book! It was an easy, light read that has a point and can help you find your why :) Isn’t that the same point I made in paragraph #1?
Apparently, those smarty pants people really know a thing or two on this because it works!
So there you go – those are just 2 things on my list, but I have many more! How about you?
oh and HAPPY New Year!
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