Reset your New Year’s resolutions

Via

I’m late! It’s 8:42pm (EST) and I am just starting to wrote today’s Motivation Monday post. I’ll give myself a pass because it’s the Monday after Christmas. So here I am, and here you are just a few days away from a brand New Year.

The reason why you will see all the gyms filled with people sweating, all the internet dating sites buzzing with activity, and a surge in the sales of self-help books is because the New Year brings us hope. Like a computer that’s taking too long to load a new page, we can press the reset button and give it another try. We have an opportunity to take an eraser and wipe the slate as clean as a whistle. This year we tell ourselves, will be different! And for many of us it will be. We’ll be a year older, maybe a bit smarter and (hopefully) a bit happier.

But what about those pesky goals, you know the ones that you may or may not have started writing down with the full intention of completing them. How will you make sure that in February you won’t hit that snooze button and instead drag your lazy behind to the gym. I know if you google “keep New Year’s Resolution” you will read it takes anywhere from 21-30 days to form a new habit. Perhaps that’s true, but statistically most of us will give up by then. Then, I read “make the goals realistic”, and of course don’t forget to “stick to them”. Wow! Those are some thought provoking and brilliant ideas (rolling my eyes).

As I stare at my own personal list, I (pinky swear) will instead reset my thoughts and ask myself, what is my intention. Why do I need to accomplish x, y and z? Step 1 is elimination. So adios to clutter, sayonara to the clothes that I will never wear again, and like my dear Mama Juana says when she’s particularly upset “vete pa’l carajo” to people and situations that no longer fit.