New Years resolutions frequently pertain to specific goals that people set at the beginning of the New Year.
From making more money to losing weight and getting healthy, these are some of the most popular New Years resolutions that people create. While one third of the American population will be making vows come New Year’s Day to make changes in their lives, less than 50% of those folks will actually keep up their New Years resolutions, come July. (Source: Health)
21 New Years Resolutions
To help you improve your mental, physical, and emotional well-being in 2015, here are 21 New Years resolutions that you can easily incorporate into your daily life, without requiring drastic changes or major effort. By sticking with these easy-to-follow New Years resolutions, over the course of 365 days, you will become a wiser, healthier, and happier person.
Mental New Years Resolutions:
1. Each morning, spend a few minutes visualizing your day. Think about the attitude you want to have and the goals you want to accomplish that day. This meditative time will help increase your productivity levels.
2. Throughout the day, mentally remind yourself of positive, inspiring words. Words such as “creativity”, “confidence”, and “success” should repeatedly resonate in your mind. Studies have shown that positive thinking done on a consistent basis can help improve one’s overall sense of self-esteem.
3. Each month, set a goal to read a new book. “Being an avid reader actually does make you smarter. It not only helps you retain information, but also helps you maintain that knowledge through old age. Whether or not you’re aware of it, reading fills your head with new information, and you never know when it will come in handy.” (Source: BuzzFeed)
4. To better manage your time, prioritize your daily tasks by writing up a to-do list. This will help you accomplish the must-get-done-immediately tasks, which will enable you to tackle the less important tasks more easily.
5. Eliminate mental clutter. That means – stop neurotically checking social media feeds throughout the day. This time-wasting distraction results in a reduced ability to focus. Limit social media to once or twice a day, and monitor how much time you spend on any network.
6. Create a monthly budget. This will help you keep track of your finances, better control your spending habits, and set financial goals for income-generation and savings.
7. Improve your office organization. Whether it’s a home office or business workspace, by tidying-up and getting documents organized, you will be able to reduce clutter and get work done more efficiently.
Physical New Years Resolutions:
8. If you want to easily lose weight, increase your intake of antioxidant-rich vegetables, high-fiber foods, and lean proteins. This gives your body the vital nutrients it needs, so you feel fuller longer, and are less prone to gravitate toward unhealthy foods.
9. Incorporate at least 30-minutes of exercise into your daily regime. Whether it’s walking, swimming, or a heart-pumping workout video, increase your aerobic activity levels to burn more calories and improve cardiovascular strength.
10. Add strength-training into your workout program. By building muscular strength, it will improve your body tone and help you handle normal physical tasks (like moving boxes or lifting groceries) more easily.
11. For a leaner physique, focus on lengthening and stretching exercises. Yoga and Pilates are excellent forms of exercise that elongate muscles and minimize muscle tension. Make sure not to over-stretch, or you could do more damage than good.
12. Focus on deep breathing. When you are stressed out, take a moment to do three deep breaths. Inhale through your nostrils, hold the breath for 10 seconds, and then exhale through your mouth.
13. Minimize the amount of sugar, saturated fat, and processed foods you eat. These types of foods often lead to illnesses, diseases (such as Diabetes), and negatively effect your body’s ability to stay healthy.
14. Drink more water. Water helps eliminate unhealthy toxins and keeps your organs functioning properly. Plus, it helps your skin look more radiant and makes your eyes look brighter and clearer.
Emotional New Years Resolutions:
15. Forgive often and quickly. Holding onto anger not only hurts your relationships, it also holds you back emotionally and prevents you from healing. Remind yourself of the quote, “If you knew everything about everyone, you’d forgive everyone for everything”. It’s so true. You don’t always know what someone is going through or why they acted how they did.
16. Whenever you feel anxious or worried, take a deep breath and remind yourself to be calm. This helps your ability to cope with any challenging situation, by relying on your mental strength to control your emotional responses.
17. Do your best to keep your heart open. By focusing on kindness, love and compassion, you not only improve your relationships with other people, you feel happier as a result.
18. Take time out to just “be”. Whether you enjoy lounging in a comfy chair, walking on the beach, or spending time in nature, take a few moments out of each day to just decompress and relax.
19. Increase your ability to communicate openly with other people. By expressing your true needs and wants, and by hearing other people’s thoughts and feelings, this two-way street of communication strengthens relationships and makes you feel closer to others.
20. Focus on gratitude. Each day, think about everything you are grateful for. This act puts life into perspective and makes you count your blessings (instead of focusing on what you are lacking).
21. Think happy thoughts. It’s easy for our minds to wander into despair and fear. But we have the ability to control our thoughts and feelings. So, do your best to focus on thoughts that bring you joy, laughter, and happiness.
[Image Credit: Shutterstock]
