With the start of a new year comes a rush of excitement, as well as a time for self-reflection. Many view the New Year as a clean slate and chance to be their best selves—or at least attempt to be for a few months anyways. Making a new year’s resolution is a popular affair and for good reason. It’s hard to meet your goals if you don’t set them. As you begin to reflect on the successes and failures of the past year as well as your goals for the new one, the following four goals are an easy place to start.
Make Healthy Choices
It’s a little cliché to go on a diet when a new year begins but that doesn’t mean you can’t have healthy goals without jumping on an extreme diet bandwagon. Instead of making grandiose and sometimes unrealistic goals such as “lose 50 lbs.”, try making smaller and more sustainable goals—such as getting a full 8 hours of sleep each night or eating a vegetable every day. Small goals that turn into habits will do much more for your health than a crash diet.
Get on the Move
In the same vein as making small diet goals, fitness goals that center around doing SOMETHING each day tend to be more sustainable than, for example, trying to run a marathon. Making a goal to meet a certain number of Fitbit steps is a popular resolution that can be both challenging and fun. Resolving to get some movement each day, whether that involves a walk or a ten minute yoga session, will do wonders for your body and your mental state. Movement creates endorphins and endorphins make us happy.
Be Confident
Not all goals should be physical, mental health is important too, though at times that can be tied to physical things. Feeling confidant in yourself can be a self-fulfilling prophesy—if you feel good, you tend to do good. The New Year is a great time to do a self-inventory of the areas that cause you insecurity and deplete this confidence, so you can mitigate these insecurities where you can. If you deal with physical insecurities, such as unruly brows, acne-ridden skin, or hair loss—it might be worth it to tackle these issues head on. Get an eyebrow wax, book an appointment with a dermatologist, invest in
hair extensions, or whatever it is that you can do to boost your confidence. If you suffer from alopecia, particular around the crown of the head, a hair extension called
light volume root coverage, which is a crown topper that can do wonders.
Stress Less
One of the most preventable factors that lead to illness and general unhappiness is stress. While you can’t change any stressful circumstances that happen, you can control your reaction and the effect they have on you. Meditating, taking a bath, reading a book before bed, doing a simple yoga routine, or anything else that brings relaxation and joy to your life should be prioritized as something that must be done every day.
