Before you make your New Years Resolutions Do This

We’re just around the corner from Christmas and straight after that comes January and of course your NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS. Before the deluge on ‘How to change your life’ begins, I would like to suggest a radical idea. Before you ‘start’ your new year, take a moment now to ‘finish’ your ‘old’ year first.

#NewYearNewMe

Poor January, the most bemoaned of all of the months, cold, wet, poor and advertising companies on a mission to make you feel fat, hairy, ugly and unsuccessful in order to make you buy all of the things! And of course the inevitable hashtag #newyearnewme

Your social media feed will soon start filling with articles telling you how to lose that weight, set those goal and change those lives! Personally I do my own bits, and last year I came across my favourite exercise to do, FINISH 2016 before I started 2017. I enjoyed it so much that today I’d like to share that with you

What did you learn this year?

Its easy enough to do, before you go hurtling into 2018 with your list of all of the things you want, take a few minutes to sit down and learn from what you got in 2017.

I always recommend to people to have a nice notebook to use for journaling, this is a great exercise to start a new notebook and you can use it to answer some questions about the year you’ve just had. Reflecting on your year will help you really focus on the lessons you learnt over that time.

How to Journal

If you want to read up more on it, this would be classed as a journaling exercise. There is no ‘wrong’ way to journal. If you feel like writing as an essay that’s great, some people use bullet points, some people draw pictures and a great way is to cut out pictures from magazines and use collage. Whatever makes you most comfortable.

Questions to ask

There is no set list of questions to ask, they’re whatever you feel comfortable with yourself. Heres a list of some ideas to help you get started:

• Whats the best word to describe my 2017?
• Why am I most proud of myself this year?
• Where was the biggest lesson I learned in 2017?
• What was the most fun I had in 2017?
• What was the low of 2017?
• Who came into my life in 2017?
• Who left my life in 2017?
• What just didn’t work for me in 2017?
• What am I going to leave in 2017?

You can get the gist from these questions. Ultimately take some time to look at your 2017 as a whole, not just the week before January! So much happens in a year that we forget. Go back through your Social Media, and your pictures in your phone, and your calendar, and take a moment to really recognise everything you’ve gone through in the year. If you’re anything like most people you’ve done so much in the last year that you’ve forgotten the half of it!

A great resource for questions is the Pinterest Journaling Pin. Honestly if I could live in the internet this would be my Home-page (literally!).

How will this help me set new Resolutions?

Well first of all, reflecting is a great way of learning and being grateful for what we do have, but there’s an even more simple answer. Now when you’re planning your ‘New Year, New You’ consider the following;

Do MORE of the things you liked

Do LESS of the things you didn’t

And those rules friend, are the best Resolutions to set for a great year ahead!

When you ARE ready then start setting new years resolutions, have a read of THIS BLOG I wrote last year on some alternative approaches to more traditional Resolutions.