So we’re already 2 weeks into this brand spanking new year and since the moment I returned to work I’ve had variations of the same conversation. Every. Single. Day.

I went to a Comedy gig in Soho on Tuesday and even there 11 days in, I’m confident the most popular word of the evening was Resolution! (I lie, in actual fact it was probably Bowie, may he rest in peace) but Resolution definitely came in an extremely close second.

Now I know I should probably be used to this by now but for some reason, this year I’ve been questioning what it is about the beginning of the year that makes, us trying to become a wholly spectacular versions of ourselves within the period of a month, so on trend?

Ever since I joined the pre-adolescent club and determined that there was such a thing as disliking various aspects of yourself I can honestly say I struggled to jump on the band wagon of making New Year Resolutions for a few very simple reasons:

The first and most prevalent being…we rarely stick to them, once the New Year’s Eve hangover abates, it’s as if the loss of alcohol flowing through our veins also causes us all to lose our minds and decide to take drastic action in the form of frantically formulating sometimes long, somewhat unachievable lists that, if we only have the strength and determination to adhere to, will make us exponentially happier with our lives. This is a farce, when I think back over the last 5, nay 10 years, about what I would have liked to tweak about myself, it becomes apparent that every single year I wanted the same things. Ultimately forcing me to come to the conclusion that I evidently I am still yet to change that which I should’ve changed post 2005. Yet even more ironically with every conversation I seem to be having in January I discover that, everyone I speak to has the same bloody list as me. Which adds to my distress even more as I realise I’m not as unique as I would try to fool you into believing.

The second reason I’m not really an advocate of setting New Year Resolutions is I can’t imagine that it is mentally or emotionally fulfilling to pinpoint each of your supposed flaws and then attempt to correct all of them in one fell swoop. Now I am a great believer in self improvement, but I also think it’s important to be realistic about what we are able to change, otherwise, conversely setting Resolutions can lead to us feeling like failures when 7 days in to the New Year we aren’t fiscally flourishing with colossal amounts of cash in our savings accounts and aren’t X amount of lbs lighter and haven’t gained those washboard abs and aren’t instantaneously happier all at once

Finally and for me this is the most baffling, why is that we want to change ourselves at the beginning of the year? Isn’t self improvement a journey? Shouldn’t we be continually evaluating ourselves and looking for ways to improve upon perfection (trust me, you are perfect) and boost our happiness. I don’t think it should be something we only consider as a last ditch attempt to start afresh, over and over again.

Now here I must warn you I will contradict myself slightly (yes I can admit that sometimes I do this), having said and wholly believing all of the above I do concur that thinking about and identifying details about ourselves that we want to make better is positive and can only enhance our well being, I just think that sometimes we go about it in the wrong way.

I read an article recently about Ditching Resolutions and rather than setting monumental unattainable goals, we should make smaller incremental changes in order to form habits instead, thus improving our chances of making life changes we may actually incorporate for longer than 30 days (if we’re stubborn). The article was focusing mainly on exercise  of course, however I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t use this method in other aspects of our lives.

With this in mind I propose the introduction of New Month Resolutions instead. As an alternative to changing every thing all at once, why don’t we try to identify one thing we wish to change, then once we have assimilated that aspect as a habit we can include whatever is next on the list. Then, and I hope I’m making sense here, not only will we feel a greater sense of achievement, it may also mean that come January 2017 (I like to think ahead) we’re not making the exact same list of resolutions as we did the previous year.

This month, like most of you, I am focusing on health and fitness, but going forward my cousin made a suggestion that I must say has intrigued me. As a continuation of my previous 30 Day Challenge blog, she suggested that I take on a challenge a month and as I will have the WHOLE month to fulfill it there’s really no excuse, and in keeping with my own personal resolution of being more of a Yes Woman (yes, it’s a thing) I can say I wholeheartedly accept.

So I’m throwing it out there, if any of you have any suggestions or challenges for me, please put them in the comments box and and one of my posts in the near future may be about something you dared me to do.

Also enlighten me…how many of you have managed to stick to your resolutions so far and what are your methods?

Peace out

xoxo

p.s one final thing, if you did enjoy reading this please go to the homepage of my website  and scroll down to the bottom and click the Follow button so you get notifications when I post!