Love your resolutions

Have you given up yet?

Some people love new year’s resolutions and some hate ‘em.

This is the third week of a new year. If you believe the pundits, then by the end of this week, any habits you decided to start or stop should come a lot easier.

The story goes that it takes three weeks to make or break a habit.

I don’t know about you, but how can three weeks feel like a lifetime for things like diets and pending trips, but pass in a few hours when it comes to vacations and time off?

A friend and I were talking about new year’s resolutions recently. She’s of the “never have, never will” variety.

Her reasoning is she’s just setting herself up for disappointment when she either gives up or doesn’t complete them and she doesn’t want to put any more stress or expectation on herself.

I always make new year’s resolutions. I love them; I think it’s something that can add value to your life.

The key though is not being too hard on yourself if you don’t complete them or if you need to redefine them.

It’s funny because up until last year, I never realized how much I follow through on my resolutions. Another good friend pointed this out.

We had each written down our resolutions on a sticky note and then posted it in a visible spot. After a while, that sticky note just became a part of the décor and was barely even noticed after a few days.

Yet, somehow, the goals I’d written down stayed in the back of my mind.

What did I write you ask? Well, I made the goals attainable ones. Ones that I really wanted to have happen. It’s amazing what one can achieve when that goal is born of desire.

My No. 1 resolution last year was to write more often. I started a blog a few years ago, but was sporadic about posting on it. Yet, I knew if I wanted to move forward with my other life aspiration, I needed to do this.

Well, that desire to write more did indeed happen. I managed to get this - my own column on Castanet.

I also decided I needed to get in shape last year. Not just for a few weeks or months, but to make the lifetime commitment to get healthy and stay healthy.

Not that I wasn’t before, but there was some serious room for improvement.

This led to me going against every single one of my beliefs about gyms. I signed a long-ish contract that cost me more than I wanted it to. But I threw myself into it.

Even my eating habits changed to match my new, more active lifestyle. Not quite a year later, I’m still living that resolution. I’ve fallen off the wagon a couple of times, but never gave up. I just re-started.

That’s the best part about resolutions. There’s no time limit on them. And if you’re going to resolve to lose weight or stop smoking or reduce stress, then, these are lifetime resolutions.

Of course, you’ll have days where you fail miserably, but it’s just a day. You get a chance to start all over again the next day with the sunrise.

The other resolution: I made a pact with myself for last year was to be open to finding love again. This is a weird one for many of us. We want it, but only on our terms. So we find all sorts of reasons and excuses why it won’t work with this person or that person.

But with a little bit of tweaking of the mindset, it’s quite spectacular what can happen in that department.

I’m happy to say I’m in a relationship that, despite the initial reservations and trials, has been well worth the time it took to build up to this point.

Where it will go from here, I have no clue. But for now, it works.

With the dawn of a new year comes the exciting chance to make some new resolutions – or in my case, to also try to finish a couple from last year.

That’s what I mean about not being hard on yourself. I didn’t do everything on my list last year, and there’s still one resolution I want to complete. So I just put it on this year’s list. This time I gave myself a time limit, so it’s not just a continuous carry-over from year to year.

I also added new ones to my list. Whether I get them all done or not this year remains to be seen. But it’s fun to just go for it. Accept that I’ll fail on some and wildly succeed on others.

I wish that for you to, if you’re the resolution-making type, enough success to want to forge onward, but a bit of failure to keep you grounded.

And if everything goes according to my plans, then this year will be busy. A new business start-up, public speaking and workshop for teens all share the top spots … right behind winning the lottery, of course.

Thanks for reading.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.