Starting 2020 on the right foot with a new blog post surrounding Resolutions! But 1st, I want to take a moment to wish you all a Happy New Year chix! May it be filled with joy, laughter, happiness, love, health, success, adventure, wonder, confidence, will power & fulfilment!
Now, let’s talk about those Resolutions! I feel like that’s a loaded word, b/c we make these “Resolutions”, which are often restrictive and frankly hard to maintain, and we basically abandon them by February. So instead of Resolutions, why not focus on the word: betterment? That is my goal this year, I want to work on myself and be a better version of me. So I chose to re-formulate these so called “Resolutions” of mine into goals & actionable items. Here are my top 5 action items for 2020 & how I transformed them from “Resolutions” into GOALS:
1- Resolution: Lose Weight. OUF, this is probably on a lot of people’s list and I’ll be honest with you guys, it re-appears on my list every single year and I almost never respect it. So, I decided to make it less scary and easier to carry out by reformulating it as “Feel better in my own skin” – it’s powerful isn’t it? It’s not about the numbers on the scale, the extra weight I am carrying is not the only issue. Eating unhealthy and not working out regularly is making me more sluggish, low on energy & bloated, which makes me feel uncomfortable and frankly unhappy. So, I’ve decided that this year, I will take full responsibility of myself. I will be more mindful of my choices – opting for a fruit instead of a piece of chocolate or choosing to hit the gym instead of hitting the couch to binge watch some shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video (yes, I have both don’t judge me)!
2- Resolution: No technology before bed. Easier said than done, I check my social media, my e-mails & I watch a TV show (usually “The Office”) on my iPad before falling asleep with the earphones still in my ears! Instead of focusing on the negative and saying “NO tech before bed”, I countered this with another resolution: Read more books in 2020 and I actually made it more interesting by attaching a number to it: Read 10 books in 2020! This will keep me more accountable without being discouraging. Unlike with the scale that discourages you when you check your weight, attaching a number to something positive can result in something great! So, before bed, instead of checking my iPhone or my iPad, I read a book. So far, I’m 1/3 in my 1st book of the year and it’s only Jan 5th, so I’m feeling confident about this one ;)
3- Resolution: Stay on budget. Nobody likes to pinch pennies, but when you end up shopping & eating out constantly, numbers are not a bad thing to account for (coming from an accountant, right? well, trust me it’s not easy even for me)! I did a monthly budget (which I will teach you how to do later this month) and I attached a number I can spend on clothes, restaurants etc. on top of the necessities like rent, electricity, car insurance and groceries. But, to make it more enjoyable, I gave myself a goal for saving. Aside from the obvious RRSPs & saving for a house, I gave myself other goals: save for travelling and save for that dream pair of shoes. Having short & long-term goals is essential to sticking to ones budget, b/c that motivation prevails above all else and crushes the impulse to make a useless purchase.
4- Resolution: Stress less. Easy to say right? Stress has a major impact on our health yet we stress all the time: being stuck in traffic, dealing with a bad boss, struggling to meet deadlines, taking on more than we can handle, etc! I took an inventory of my stress factors and decided to stop playing the victim and take responsibility for living with my choices. If I know I’ll be stuck in traffic in the morning, I will start waking up earlier so that I can avoid the traffic altogether! If I know that I cannot meet an unrealistic deadline, I will voice it immediately. Instead of letting the stress get to me, I vow to get ahead of the stress factors and make the necessary changes to my life to avoid stress altogether and be happier and healthier as a result!
5- Resolution: Be more organized! I’m a clean freak, I’m constantly cleaning and re-arranging stuff at home, yet it’s crazy how disorganized I can get. From files saved all over my desktop without any logical order to the clutter in my closet – it’s all driving me nuts and I cannot focus on any other task until I get it all organized. But at the end of the day, its my own fault, b/c instead of unboxing that package I just received, I just let it pile up in the corner of the room, or that outfit I wore the other day, it’s still sitting on my chair waiting to be hung up! So, to help myself out with this one, I decided to break it down into smaller tasks. Every time I get a package, I will open it up immediately, put the item in the right place and recycle the box the same day. The same will go for other stuff like my closet: when I get back from work, I will put away all my clothes before getting into my cozy Pjs and classifying files on my desktop into comprehensible & easy to navigate folders. Instead of leaving things till “tomorrow”, addressing them TODAY will make all the difference.
Now your turn, what are your GOALS for 2020?
Kisses,
WCX
Love your goals