To Do or Not to Do, That is the Question

I love reading blogs!

I got into blog reading back in highschool. I was totally on the healthy eating band wagon and I was always down to find another blog that gave me more insight. The same reason why I adopted the hobby of making my own beauty products-blogs

I was so into reading blogs that I had to create a blog myself once I graduated from highschool. Although my blogging is very basic, more an online journal than anything. I am still a very avid blog reader, but now my tastes have expanded into more subjects and not just healthy living. Infact, I barely read any healthy living blogs anymore sadly. Ha

In my most recent blog hunting I have come across some women who have presented very unique ideas on the subject of new years resolutions. Which is no surprise considering it is the season!

I have always viewed "New Years Resolutions" as a check list of sorts. You write down all the things or just a few things you want to improve upon in the new year and then work all year to achieve your goals (that is if you even remember you made goals). Ha! Okay so last year I made absolutely no attempt at even thinking of things I wanted to improve upon. I just threw the whole new year goal to the curb. I guess at the time I felt like they were overrated.

This year, I was reading a blog and a post came up with the title "Why I Stopped Making New Year Resolutions." Okay so this sounded pretty interesting to me so I went on to read it. She began her post by answering, essentially, the question of why she stopped. But then she went on to say what she does instead. In essence, she comes up with one word. One word that she wants to incorporate into her life the following year and then puts all her thought into developing that word. For example, your word (or phrase!) might be: "BE BOLD" or as simple as "LOVE"

I really liked where she was going with this so I started thinking about the effectiveness of this strategy over making a check list per se. I also came up with my own word in the event I do this for myself. The word that I have been leaning towards is, Initiate.

This is really more of a life goal for me than anything, but making that the center of my focus for the year could really expedite the process.

Anyways, while this has been mulling around in my head I ran across ANOTHER blog post by a different author who gave even yet another unique solution for bettering yourself this year. I am even more intrigued by her method and I am totally on board with the idea.

The title of her post was: "A Year of 30 Day Challenges"

The concept of the "21 day challenge" was first introduced to me during a success meeting for Mary Kay. There I learned that it takes 21 days to create a habit. In terms of Mary Kay when you say "21 day challenge" it specifically refers to a method we use to have an ever going list of people to call to book appointments. It's really quite genius honestly. Since then I have heard other people refer to "21 day challenges" that relate to another goal or aspect of life. The key is to do it for 21 days because that is the proven time frame of how long it takes to create a habit. This lady incorporates the same idea into her year, though she plans for 30 days because that's a whole month, and if you do it for 21 days why not do it for a month, yeah? Ha

So this really got my mind turning! Think of all the things you could improve upon this next year by just focusing on it for 30 days. Each month you find another goal to work on and hopefully the goal you worked on the last month has now become a habit so that you just keep right on doing it but if not you haven't let yourself down because technically your goal was to only do it for only 30 days anyways!

They could be as simple as making your bed every day for 30 days or as complex as an intense work out plan or eating plan for 30 days. Whatever floats your boat.

This feels very realistic to me. I may seriously struggle at doing something for 365 days, but I can most definitely do something for 30 days. Now the only trick is coming up with 12 different goals you want to work on (or 11 if your coming upon it late in the game like me.)


What do you think of these alternatives to the traditional way of making new years resolutions?

Are you up for trying any? Or do you have your own unique way? If so, by all means share. As you may have already gathered, I am very open to new ideas.


And now to share a little humor on the subject...Haha I couldn't help!