New Year’s resolutions

The year 2025 has a nice ‘ring’ to it! For those of us who still believe in making New Year’s resolutions, I commend you, because it takes a whole lot of hope, ambition, conviction, and determination to pull it off! But, it also requires a change of old habits and the courage to start new ones that can and will improve your life!

So how do we get started? First of all it’s not too late–so, get out a pen and paper. No really, physically writing down your goals by hand will create more of an impact mentally, much like writing a contract to yourself.

Using the method of ‘free association’ to start will help you organize and prioritize your thoughts. For example, you may write down, “I want to lose 12 pounds”, or you may write down, “I want o be a better parent”, or “I want to get a better job”, or “I want to make new friends”, or find a partner that ‘gets me’. Or, you may write down all of the above with several different goals in mind!

Let’s not forget writing down other ‘wants’ as well, such as “I want to laugh more, or dance more, or go on mini-vacations more, or play more with the kids, etc.”

Once you’ve written down your basic ‘wants list’, then organize each ‘want’, starting with your top priority, then going down the list methodically, in order of most urgent or most important. For example, you may start with “I want to lose more weight”. Jot down ways to make that happen, such as “cut out all ‘white foods’, no breads, sugars, pastas, potatoes, etc. Eat any and all vegetables and fresh fruits, and regarding high protein, eat only fish and lean chicken, etc.” The more details, the better. Your mind will then start to process that information, and the more often you read from this list, you’ll naturally start to narrow down your eating options to the point where, mentally, you’ll build up more resistance to temptation!

As elementary as this may all sound–it actually works! And, speaking of ‘work’ it’s imperative that you know that only by putting both your mental and physical effort into doing this, can you see the results. And, as the saying goes–we all need to produce “results, not excuses”. Good luck to all of you for the New Year 2025!