New Year's Resolutions + How To Actually Succeed At Them

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a lovely New Year's Eve and an wonderful start to 2015!

Have you all been making New Year's resolutions? More importantly, are you going to be keeping your resolutions?? Not sure? Yeah, me neither. I am one of those people that makes a lot of great resolutions but never really sticks with them...

So this year I decided to do some research and see what science has to say about sticking to your New Year's resolution and I've complied a list of tips to help you stick to them.

Set manageable goals
Setting an unmanageable goal like 'I will complete a marathon in 3 months' when the last time you went running was 4 years ago will never get done. It just won't. It's great that you have such high hopes, but the sheer amount of work that would be involved in completing that would throw off nearly everyone. Although, saying that, if you have completed a goal like that, then kudos to you! I am in awe of your dedication! But for most of us, it's not going to work. Instead, try something like 'I would like to be able to complete a marathon and so to do this I will go running 3 times a week, for increasing amounts of time'. Or something like that. I don't run, so I actually have no clue how one would go about creating a running schedule.

Set measurable goals
This also fits in well with the previous tip. Having a vague goal like 'I will eat healthier' has no actual plan and so you are unlikely to stick with it. Also, the word 'healthy' is equally very ambiguous - what do you want to improve about your eating habits? Do you want to choose more organic and free range products? Do you want to reduce your meat consumption or increase your fruit and vegetable intake? Do you want to reduce your fat or sodium intake or increase your protein intake? Choose one on two things you can do to help reach your goal of 'eat healthier' and set a plan for it. So your new goal could be 'to have at least 3 meat free days a week and to choose free range meat whether possible'.

Tell people about them
I always kept my New Year's goals secret from everyone because I read somewhere that it's bad luck to tell people your New Year's resolutions. But, it turns out that the opposite is true. If you tell lots of people about your goals, then you it's not just you that will know if you fail at completing them. Lots of other people will know too - how's that for incentive! Which leads me on to my next tip...

Have an incentive to complete them
Everybody works better when they have an incentive. But not everybody has the same incentive so choose something that's applicable to you. Maybe you'll buy yourself that really lovely, yet expensive thing you want. Maybe it's going to help you in your everyday life. Maybe someone else is going to give you money if and when you complete it. Point is, if you have something exciting waiting for you at the finish line, you are much more likely to reach it.

So, with that in mind, here are my resolutions for 2015...

1. Work on having, and maintaining a blogging schedule

I started a blogging schedule back in June of this year, but it's a bit sporadic... However I know that when I plan out posts in advance, they are better written, more likely to be on time and a better mix of nails, reviews, advice tips and ramblings. So my goal is to stick to my blogging schedule, plan out each month in advance and post 8+ times per month.

2. Succeed in doing the splits (both sides)

Okay, maybe that was my resolution for last year, but I didn't achieve it. I went though periods of being really enthused about stretching and then being really apathetic about it. However, while I didn't succeed it getting my splits, I got a whole lot closer to them. So this year I am going to get there. I have greatly improved recently and I am taking a splits and flex dance class and have found some good online resources to help me. It's also going help a lot in my dancing, so I have incentive!

3. Complete all six levels of Code Avengers.

Ever since I decided to redo my blog's design and layout, I've been trying to learn as much about coding and HTML as I can. I came across Code Avengers by accident but I'm extremely happy I did! They teach HTML, CSS and Java script lessons that are self paced and super-hero themed, which makes it more exciting (because I'm a massive nerd at heart). It's also fun to be learning a new skill. 

4. Work on my strength and fitness

Being strong and flexible is something that I value in myself I used to be much fitter than I am now, due to my martial arts, but as most of you will know, I had to drop that because of my eating disorder and exercise compulsion. But I've been dancing successfully for 4 months now and I've stayed on the straight and narrow, so I'm looking forward to being able to push myself a little more in both my strength and flexibility. So this kind of ties into my splits goal, but other than that, it's not really a very good goal as it's not specific, time-based or measurable, but I'm going to include it anyway. 

5. Complete my Avengers Assemble series
This should be a fairly easy goal to complete, but considering I started in June last year and I've only done three since then, I thought I had better make it official and stick it on here in order to give me a bit more of an incentive.

And they are my tips and my goals for 2015 - what are yours?