New Year, But Not a New Me: Why Gratitude is the Way Forward, and Resolutions are No More

Happy New Year to you! Let’s talk gratitude.

Are you already sick of seeing everyone’s ‘new year, new me’ posts?

How about the body transformation ones?

And let’s not mention the endless posts of people complaining of the food they ate over the festive period.

I used to get involved with these; Writing resolutions, feeling bad if I overindulged, and paying for a new gym membership.

But things have changed.

I don’t feel that it’s healthy to put that amount of pressure on myself at the start of each year.

How often have you made a list of resolutions and then given up a few weeks or months later?

That results in a feeling of failure, which can have a negative affect on making the changes you want.

Decrease Your Goals, To Increase Your Outcomes

Small, achievable goals that can be refreshed every week or month are the way forward instead.

If I successfully complete a small task, this motivates me to do more- if I fail a task, it does the opposite.

I want to lose weight to reduce my cholesterol and increase wellbeing, but starting at a five stone target isn’t helpful.

Instead, I want to focus on tasks like meal planning and finding ways I can naturally increase movement.

So longer dog walks is a realistic goal I am more likely to achieve than five workouts a week right now.

Making better food choices rather than dieting is another that’s more likely to work.

As I start to swap fatty foods for healthier ones and move my body more, my motivation and positivity will increase.

And then… I can take the next goal steps of a workout once a week, and so on until I’m exercising three times a week and feeling those endorphins!

Gratitude Attitude

Gratitude is the main thing I’m taking into 2022.

If you follow my socials, you’ll know I’ve dabbled with the law of attraction throughout 2021, and enjoyed the optimism it brought me.

Last year was one of the hardest of my life, and coming into this new year it’s still very tough.

It nearly broke me recently, but now I want to bring some of the gratitude work back into my routine, to see if it helps.

Whilst I cannot change the difficult situation I’m in right now, I can adapt from focusing on the negatives and try to pull out some positives.

Just like my new year post last year, reframing can have such a positive affect on wellbeing.

I’m not perfect- I know reframing helps, yet I’ve spent months dwelling on everything I do wrong.

But it does get to a point where enough is enough.

I want to wake up and look forward to the day ahead, or at least not feel full of anxiety about it.

So my small goals for January are:

January Goals

• Complete a small gratitude list every day (and restart The Magic book to help with this)
• Allocate more time to playing with my son
• Try to read a few pages of a self-help book I want to complete
• Increase the length of my daily dog walks
• Create a week or fortnight-long meal plan

Pressure-Free Zone

My advice is to keep any goals pressure free.

If you don’t achieve them, so what?

Maybe there’s a good reason you didn’t?

Monthly Check-Ins

Anything from the list I don’t achieve will be looked at to see if I can break them down into smaller goals for the following month.

It’s almost like a monthly check-in, to see whether the goals still serve me or if they actually need to change.

I tend to post stories on Instagram most days of what I get up to, and this can help me feel accountable to achieving things.

If you’re planning to make any similar changes, feel free to DM me and we can keep each other accountable.

Remember Who You Are

Overall, remember that a new year does not need to signify that you need to be a new person.

Love who you are, and if there’s any areas that you want to improve, look into how you can do this.

Don’t do it for anyone else, do it for you.

2022 is just a date. It doesn’t signify a need for you to do anything, unless you want it to.