How are you feeling this year? Are you ready to take on a new New Year's Resolution or are you avoiding the topic altogether? The importance of self-care, doing things that serve your happiness and well-being for the sake of happiness and well-being, has never been greater. Since the start of the pandemic, people have been looking for new ways to enjoy their own company and invest in their own physical health and mental health. But self-care does not have to feel like a burden! If you want to kick off the New Year with more health and happiness than ever before, check out these New Years' rituals and healthy habits that you'll actually want to stick to.
New Year's Resolutions rarely make it to Valentine's Day. In fact, 80% of New Year's Resolutions don't make it to February at all! Why is that?
According to psychotherapists and experts in motivation, one of the biggest reasons people don't keep their New Year's resolutions is because they're not specific enough. For instance, goals to "lose weight" or "spend less time working" leave too much gray area. When given this gray area and lack of accountability, we will surely take advantage of it. To avoid this, make your goals more specific. For specific health goals, this might look like "Lose 20 pounds" or "Take a 30-minute walk every day". But for even more effective and "sticky" goals, try to make you set goals specific to your motivations and wants. Here's what I mean.
Setting a goal to "lose 20 pounds" is great! It's easy to measure and track your progress. But when you look at your internal motivations, the things that are going to make a goal into a good habit, you need to make sure they are explicitly named and realized. Why do you want to lose 20 pounds? What will happen if you don't? Think about what this goal will help you to achieve! An example outside of weight loss might be to "Take a 30-minute walk every day, so I can explore the city I just moved to, so I can form new so I can appreciate nature, so I can be inspired to make new art, so I can meet new people." etc. These goals not only clearly define the goal and the motivation, they make the focus less on a rigid goal and more on self-improvement, self-love, and curiosity. These are the goals that will detract from your stress levels, not add to them!
New Year's Resolutions do not (and should not) feel like a chore! If you're struggling to build a routine or break out of bad habits, try to practice self-care tips that amount to a lot of physical and mental change!
