By Eve Coleman, Second Year, English
The Croft Magazine // New Year's resolutions can be great for motivation and self-improvement. However, they can also burden us with unnecessary pressure. If you haven't kept yours, don't panic!
The first week of January. Gyms crammed full of poor souls sweating out the Christmas excesses in a miserable attempt to fulfil their ‘get healthy’ resolution. By March, many will glance at their bank balance and realise that their only involvement with the gym since has been paying their monthly membership fee.
Research has shown that around one quarter of people will abandon their New Year’s resolutions after just one week and only around eight per cent of people will accomplish their goals by the end of the year.
While the typically short-lived nature of our resolutions is often humorous, it can be problematic in exposing us to a defeatist attitude from the very outset of the year, leading to the flippant abandonment of our aspirations for self-improvement.
Yet resolutions do not have to be a self-punishing tool of inevitable failure as there are many ways of reforming the tradition to aid our chances of success. The first step is to swap large and vague goals such as ‘lose weight’ or ‘increase productivity’ for specific, attainable targets with clear planning and measures of success. Greater clarity in targets may look like ‘work out three times a week’, ‘get eight hours of sleep every night’ or ‘limit phone usage to one hour per day’. These enable us to explicitly track our progress, offering a sense of fulfilment which will increase our motivation to remain committed to the goal.
it is important to be gentle with ourselves and accept our imperfections
Equally important is to tailor our resolutions to our preferences - if improved fitness is on your agenda then find a form of physical activity that you enjoy and look forward to in your week, be that athletics, dancing or roller derby! We are much more likely to incorporate lifestyle changes that bring happiness into our long-term daily routine.
Finally, attitude is fundamental to the success of resolutions - we must have confidence in our ability to achieve our goals. Some of us know that our motivation will be short-lived before January has even arrived but self-belief and determination are essential if we wish to make our aspirations a reality. Alongside this, it is important to be gentle with ourselves and accept our imperfections - the odd slip-up here and there should not lead to a guilty abandonment of our goals, but rather serve as a reminder of why we first desired this lifestyle transformation.
In personal experience, this year I have found it helpful to follow programmes specifically designed for New Year amelioration. Dusting off my yoga mat, I have been following the Yoga with Adriene ‘Home’ series of daily yoga practice, drawing motivation from the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are in peaceful warrior alongside me!
The improvement in my strength, balance and energy levels is profound and it’s refreshing to find love for my body in the mobility and power that it enables, rather than falling into the often-negative trap of ‘fitspiration’ motivated exercise. Regular yoga practice has also helped me to focus on mindfulness - clearing time in my often busy and distracting schedule for intentional breath and movement.
I have also been taking part in Veganuary as the New Year offers a fantastic opportunity to transition to a plant-based diet, especially with the many innovative vegan releases from mainstream chains and supermarkets.
Eating with compassion and environmental impact in mind has transformed my concept of nutrition and experimenting with vegan recipes has invigorated a new passion for cooking. Being part of the online Veganuary community has been hugely beneficial for meal inspiration and encouragement to avoid the post-Christmas cheese boards!
New Year’s Resolutions can be a great way to incorporate positive habits for self-improvement into our lives. While the ‘New Year, New Me’ mentality can often warrant an eye-roll, there is something exciting about the ability of a new year and in this case a new decade, to motivate enhancement and advancement. You need not despair if January has seen the death of your resolutions: it’s not too late to hit the reset button to make 2020 ‘your year’!
Featured image: Epigram / Rosie Angel-Clark
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