While a New Year’s resolution can be cliché, it’s never a bad time to refocus on our goals. By adopting healthy habits for the New Year, we can benefit our hearts, minds, and bodies in ways that will pay off for years to come.
New Year’s Resolution Ideas
What comes to mind when you think of a traditional New Year’s resolution? For many of us, it’s the same thing: better finances, weight loss, and healthier relationships. While that certainly doesn’t sound so bad, there are certain issues with these goals that tend to hurt or pressure us on the path to achieving these goals.
Financial abundance and money management are practices we can all benefit from. However, we’ve noticed in recent years that it’s not just about better spending and saving habits.
Many of us are influenced by what we see online and by the luxurious or affluent lifestyles we aspire to. While it’s reasonable to strive for more, it’s best to have regular financial health checks to ensure our motivations are sound and a comparison mindset isn’t pushing us toward unrealistic ideals or insecurities.
Another common New Year’s resolution that is rather problematic often involves weight loss. There’s such a gray area when it comes to self-love and body positivity, and what “being healthy” means.
Often, on both sides, we lose sight of the fact that being happy in your own skin, feeling good about yourself, and making sure we live a healthy life is the fulfillment of this New Year’s resolution. For 2022 and beyond, instead of focusing on a scale or a pant size, our fitness goals are about feeling and we’re ready to feel good.
10 New Year’s resolution ideas to practice self-love and self-care
Take some time to reflect on past New Year’s resolutions and the feelings they evoked. For some, a New Year’s resolution is a great way to organize and plan. For others, they are hard to follow and can cause shame or stress when we don’t succeed.
Here are 10 shameless New Year’s resolutions to help you achieve all of your goals, but most importantly to help you be the happiest, healthiest humans we can be.
#1: Prioritize quality time… with yourself
In many cases, indulging in unhealthy habits stems from something missing inside. Taking 5 minutes to meditate in the morning, spending more time in the shower, or even taking the long way home, gives us a bit more mental space to just to be. Not being a mother, co-worker, or wife, but being whatever we feel in those (brief, but hopefully not long) moments.
#2: Practice gratitude
Losing sight of our blessings can highlight scarcity or what we feel are our flaws. It eats away at our positive energy and happiness.
Instead, practicing written or verbal gratitude is a reminder to live in the present. For example, I am grateful for taking this time to prioritize myself. I’m grateful that I can live another day. It could even be something simple like I’m grateful that chocolate chip cookies exist. Even if it only starts with a small thing, intentionally writing down what we are grateful for can really change our moods and our lives.
#3: Seek a harmonious balance
Once we’ve gotten into a bit of negativity, it can be easy to get tangled up in it and start pointing out everything that’s wrong. For every negative thought or comment, try to balance it with two positives. For example, we’re out of hot water but at least I have a warm bathrobe to snuggle up in and a new soothing mask to try while I wait.
#4: Encourage physical health
As we mentioned, living a healthier lifestyle is almost always a New Year’s resolution for people — partly because of the holiday season ahead. Rather than unrealistic goals or impossible habits, we encourage health over fitness. We work on it by participating in mindful active habits that allow us to build strength, build endurance, increase flexibility, or enrich our lifestyles in equally physical and imperceptible ways.
#5: Avoid unrealistic expectations
In many cases, unmet expectations or comparisons are the reason we feel less than ourselves. Instead, we need to encourage each other, give each other grace, and take note of our own progress toward the goals we are aiming for. It’s okay for goals to adapt to our progress, instead of trying to force us to meet outside demands.
#6: Give back
For those who are able to offer time, a listening ear, warm meals or funds to others who could benefit from support, giving back is an experience that has such a positive impact on the world that we surrounded. When we are able to give, and we do, we end up giving ourselves something that is priceless.
#7: Adopt better habits
What habits in 2021 didn’t meet our needs, or caused us unhappiness and stress? Starting with our list of New Year’s resolutions, we’ll tweak habits one by one to achieve healthier eating, better quality sleep, or more time (even if it’s virtual) with loved ones.
#8: Discover something new
One thing that can be disappointing at the end of a year is how little we have explored, so we make a conscious effort to discover a new perspective. Book that dance class, try this recipe, drive somewhere unfamiliar, then document it to finally officially tick it off the list of New Year’s resolutions.
#9: Cultivate Mental Health
We are the only ones who live in our heads, and that means we have to take care of ourselves. It’s okay to tell someone about our feelings or keep a journal for mental clarity. Rather, it is the courageous and responsible thing to do, to know that we are doing our best to be and give our best.
#10: Be yourself
It sounds simple, but it can be difficult for some of us not to behave in ways that keep the peace, or to bite our tongues when we feel ignored, or even to see others on the path we wish and ask ourselves why we don’t keep pace. In times like these, let’s remember that everyone is on a different path. We are each amazing and unique and more than enough, as we are. Here’s to a great year!
