As we close the door on a difficult year and look forward to the dawning of a new year ahead, you may be thinking about your new year’s resolutions.
Every year millions of Americans make promises to themselves like go to the gym, start a diet, walk 20,000 steps per day, and most are forgotten about by February. This year, why not try something different?
The Benefits Of Having An Aim
With most new year’s resolutions, they are not firm enough, or they’re too difficult to actually do. “Go to the gym five nights a week” might be fine for the first week or so, but once life gets in the way, your boss asks you to work overtime, the kids are sick, etc., suddenly that plan goes out of the window, and once you’ve stopped going once, you’ll stop going again and again.
The funny thing about having an aim is that the more you improve on yourself, the more benefit you will see. This is known as Pareto’s Law, named after the Italian economist who discovered that roughly 80% of the results in anything come from 20% of the work. The Pareto distribution also shows that when things are going well they grow rapidly, but if you’re on a downward spiral, things get worse rapidly. It’s a delicate balance.
New Year’s Resolutions
With that in mind, think about your new year’s resolutions as aims for your life that you can do every day that will make a big impact. If you spent just one and a half days per week (less than a weekend) improving your life, the likelihood that you would see huge benefits rapidly is almost a mathematical fact.
Here are six new year’s resolutions that you should consider for the year ahead.
Get Your Finances In Order
Are you in debt? Do you have no idea where your money goes every week? Get in touch with a financial advisor to go through your finances and make a plan and a goal for the rest of your year (and your life).
A financial advisor, such as Michael Ladge, Wealth Manager in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, will be able to help you plan your investments, understand your finances, and put you on a solid path for the future.
Fix Your Posture
Did you know that your posture affects your mood? When you are hunched over and downcast, your serotonin production is low; when you stand up straight and push your shoulders back, your brain is flooded with a little hit of serotonin, making you feel more powerful.
Powerful people get results, so aim to fix your posture in the new year.
Organize Your Home
When you make an effort to tidy and organize the place you live, it’s like a ripple that changes the world on a micro-level. If everyone in the world took responsibility for their own little part of it, the world would be a much better place. Take the first step and organize your own home today.
Plan Out Date Nights
Around 50% of American marriages end in divorce. There are many reasons for it, but studies have shown that couples who keep the romance in their relationships alive have more of a chance of staying together.
Make an effort to plan in date nights with your significant other, or at least to show each other a little more romance than you are used to showing each other.
Get Therapy
Therapy can be an incredible tool for everyone. Many of us are dealing with disappointments and difficulties from our past that, if worked through with a professional therapist, we can overcome and emerge stronger.
Thanks to the pandemic, many therapists are now offering video calls and consultations, so now is an excellent time to sort out your past and build a better and brighter future.
Plan To Do Something That Scares You
This can be a really difficult resolution to keep to, planning to do something that scares you. What scares you will be different from what scares someone else, and it’s not that you have to do something that will actually terrify you or put you in danger, but pushing the boundaries every now and again is really healthy.
Perhaps bungee jumping isn’t on your list of things you want to test yourself with, but maybe taking a solo trip is? How about speaking up for yourself in your next work meeting? Little things can make the difference, and doing one thing every now and again that scares you will help you become a stronger person.
