Megan Leboff
Staff Writer
With the start of the new year, many are wondering if they should even bother with resolutions; here’s why you should.
It happens every year. People gathered around the tv, waiting in anticipation for that giant, fabulous ball in New York to drop. When it finally does, people cheer, noisemakers go wild, and corks fly off champagne bottles. The official start of the New Year. But this time around, many people have ditched a crucial next step: new year’s resolutions.
Many will tell you they don’t work, that they’re just an ephemeral manifestation of our regrets of last year; the things we hoped to accomplish but never got around to it. But resolutions can be so much more than that, if you do them right.
The most common mistake made by resolutioners is setting their goals too high. Maybe it’s doubling your salary, or working out every day. Sometimes, these goals are simply unachievable. And while setting your goals high at the very start of the new year may seem like a good idea, once you get around to it, it is exceedingly likely you’ll get overwhelmed, and simply give up.
With so many people frustrated seeing as their resolutions for last year didn’t come true, you might be wondering: how do you do new years resolutions right?
Let me set a scene for you: It’s 11:00 pm, an hour before the new year. The LeBoffs are sitting in the living room laughing, crafting, and occasionally glancing at the New Years celebration entertainment on TV. They’re making vision boards — filling the once blank poster with pictures that embody their goals, and embellishments that make it their own.
Everybody’s is different; my mom had 4 big printed pictures on her’s, covering the rest in glitter, while mine was filled end to end with pictures. My dad even drew his own pictures (adding googly eyes of course). And when the ball finally dropped in New York, we presented our posters to the family.
We kept it vague, so, for example, I had a picture of a gym. Instead of saying “I’m going to work out every single day” I simply said “I’d like to work out more”
Then, once the night had come to a close, we all hung up our vision boards in a spot we would see nearly every day — a constant reminder of what we would like to achieve. A year later; I can tell you that every single thing on my vision board was fulfilled. Same thing for the rest of my family. Those vision boards really worked.
They served as a gentle reminder throughout the year to get my life together, and possibly even make it better. There were no overwhelming feelings, no crazy expectations, just pictures on a board.
Now of course a vision board isn’t required in order to make your new year’s resolutions, but there are a few things that will make your resolutions more likely to succeed. First, make your goals vague. You never know what is going to happen in the new year, so you need your resolution to be adaptable.
Second, keep your resolutions close to you throughout the year. The only reason I was able to complete my goals is because I was reminded of them every day.
And finally, know that you’re not perfect. You’re not going to complete your goals in a day, and some days, you may even feel like you went backwards. But stick with it, and by the end of the year, you’ll find yourself to be a better person than you were a year before.
