9 New Year’s Resolutions To Start Today & Improve Your Life

New Year’s Resolutions have been a thing for around 4,000 years. However, these days, statistics show that only 9% of Americans who make resolutions stick to them and see them through, 23% quit before the end of the first week, and 44% are done by the end of January.

So instead of starting the super restrictive it or joining the gym only twice before giving up, why not find some resolutions that you can stick to and will actually enhance your life, not force you to do things you really don’t want to or take away from the enjoyment in your life.

But remember, you don’t need to wait until New Year to put yourself out there. You can start today to give yourself a headstart on January 1st and give yourself a new lease of life.

Schedule More You Time

Instead of booking that gym membership in the New Year, why not book some time for yourself instead? Investing in yourself and giving yourself the time to relax or do something you enjoy can be more beneficial to your mental health than forced activities you are only doing because you think you should be.

Scheduling more time for yourself can look like anything that makes you happy. It can be spending an hour in your favorite coffee shop week without rushing in to grab a coffee to go and sitting down to enjoy it instead; it can be booking in for a monthly massage, scheduling girls’ time, turning off electronics, and heading to bed an hour earlier or even slotting in some weekend city breaks away. Whatever you want to do, make more time for it.

Get Outside More

Getting outside more each day is beneficial for both your vitamin D intake and your mental health. There are many options for you to get outside. You can drink your morning cuppa in the yard at home, you can take a lunchtime stroll, or head out to your local beach or park for a walk each day. It doesn’t matter what you do, but getting outside more can help you to get more active, support your health via getting enough vitamin D, and boost your mental health; more benefits include getting more fresh air, from increased oxygen to boosting serotonin, increased energy and fitness, and lower stress levels.

Eat Mindfully

Researchers at McGill University found that people who applied mindfulness to their eating habits, not just their lifestyles, lost weight while also managing to reduce emotional eating, binge eating, and anxiety.

Take your time when eating, savor your food, and enjoy every mouthful. Make it your aim to sit and take the time to eat, not just inhale your food, stay focused on the task at hand, and not get distracted.

Not only will eating this way help you to eat less, it will enable you to make more conscious food choices and enjoy what you eat. So stop, slow down meal times, and give each mouthful your undivided attention.

Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself

A significant change to implement in your life is not being so hard on yourself. Things in life happen, and criticizing yourself and giving yourself a hard time will only make you feel worse and impact your mental health.

Nothing good can come from being unnecessarily hard on yourself. So address the situation, note what you could have done differently or what you can change, do what needs doing, and move on, giving yourself a chance to make the changes positively instead of holding yourself back.

Change Your Mindset

No one is saying you need to become the beacon of positivity. Still, if you have a habit of putting yourself down, getting in thoughts of negativity, or telling yourself you aren’t capable or worthy of something, then you need to address how your mindset impacts your life.

Try changing how you think about yourself by flipping negative statements on their head. Instead of saying, “I wish I were able to do xxx,” tell yourself you are “lucky to be able to do xxx” instead. 

Try writing down things you are grateful for, what you like about yourself, or positive things that have happened in your life instead of dwelling on the not-so-good parts. By doing this and putting the positives before the negatives in your life, you will soon find you start to gradually feel better and shift your mindset to help you boost your mental health.

Quit Bad Habits

Telling yourself you’re going to give something up in the New Year will likely only make you crave that item or action even more, and you are essentially setting yourself up for failure. 

But bad habits need to be broken sooner rather than later. Make a pact with yourself to address the issue in a way that works for you.

• Identify the issues you want to quit and why.
• Look at how it is harming your life and the impact it is having on you. This could be health, mod, financial, or relationship angles.
• Address when you partake in the habit, your triggers, and when you are more likely to indulge.
• Look at the options available to help you stop this habit, be it looking at an addiction treatment center for men and women, talking to your doctor about smoking cessation support, or removing triggers from your life.
• Find new, healthier habits you can replace your previous ones with.
• Set goals and a timeline to work towards, with incentives to keep you going.
• Don’t underestimate how hard it can be; get in the right frame of mind to push through the hard times and take the good with the bad.

Meal Plan

Don’t fall into the trap of going on crazy restrictive diets in the New Year, only to over-restrict and then binge a few weeks later. Instead, why not try meal planning now to help you get into the routine of eating better and more consistently to help you reduce cravings and binges?

Start with making a meal plan to help you shop and only buy what is on your list. You can meal prep or make your meals as you go but aim to have at least 3 balanced meals per day: protein, veg, carbs, and healthy fats. The more balanced your meals are and the more protein you eat, the more satiated you will feel, and this in turn will lead to a healthier diet that can facilitate weight loss if required and improve your health if not.

You can include snacks and treats on your meal plan but make your main meals the focus, as this can help reduce decision fatigue and fall into the trap of ordering takeout.

Don’t Hit Snooze

Instead of hitting the snooze button every morning and groaning when getting out of bed 10, 15, or 20 minutes after the first, why not get to bed a little bit earlier? Adults need around 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, and it needs to be good quality sleep. If you’re always left wanting a little more sleep once your alarm goes off, aim to go to bed slightly earlier. Develop a bedtime routine that encourages you to get some shut-eye; remove electronics from the bedroom, don’t do vigorous exercise too close to bedtime, and avoid alcohol to help you get ready for bed. 

Experiment with different bedtimes to help you figure out what bedtime suits your wake-up time and help you to get more sleep. This way, you can jump out of bed and start your day without hitting the snooze button.

And if you’ve already tried that, why not put your alarm somewhere else? This way you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Then you are up, and you can avoid going back to bed for that extra 5 minutes.

Try Something New

Make yourself a bucket list and try to do something new or different each month or week if you want to. It can be something as simple as trying that local restaurant you have been meaning to go to. Or it can be learning a new language or instrument or simply walking to work instead of driving.

If there are things you have been meaning to do, get a new haircut, try a different exercise class, or even learn to swim if you can’t swim already, then get it on your list and do it. It can be as simple or extreme as you want it to be, but try not to take on too much at once, especially ones that require time and dedication to do, such as learning a new language. 

Why not write everything down on a piece of paper, fold it up, and put it in a jar? Then, once a week or month, pull a piece of paper out and do what it says.

There is no need to wait until New Year to set your resolutions, or even set any at all. But if you want to make changes in your life without setting yourself up for failure, these changes are accessible, sustainable, and will still benefit your life.